The Department of Justice filed charges Monday against Representative LaMonica McIver (D., N.J.) in connection with a clash with law enforcement that occurred outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Newark last week.
“Today my office has charged Congresswoman McIver with violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 111(a)(1) for assaulting, impeding and interfering with law enforcement,” acting U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Alina Habba said in a post on X.
Habba also announced that she would be dismissing a trespassing charge against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who was previously charged with class C misdemeanor trespassing at the facility.
“After extensive consideration, we have agreed to dismiss Mayor Baraka’s misdemeanor charge of trespass for the sake of moving forward,” Habba said in a statement.
She noted that the dismissal of the charges against the New Jersey gubernatorial candidate would not be the end of the matter.
The incident occurred last week when Baraka, McIver, and Representatives Robert Menendez Jr. (D., N.J) and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D., N.J.) were outside the ICE facility with a group of protesters. The gates to the facility opened to allow an ICE bus in, and the four officials then entered through the gates and slipped past security, according to officials from the Department of Homeland Security.
The three members of Congress say they were there to inspect the facility as lawmakers conducting federal oversight.
McIver dismissed the charges against her as “purely political” and said she looks forward “to the truth being laid out clearly in court.”
“Earlier this month, I joined my colleagues to inspect the treatment of ICE detainees at Delaney Hall in my district. We were fulfilling our lawful oversight responsibilities, as members of Congress have done many times before, and our visit should have been peaceful and short. Instead, ICE agents created an unnecessary and unsafe confrontation when they chose to arrest Mayor Baraka,” she said.
Menendez previously accused ICE agents of putting their hands on McIver and Watson Coleman.
“We were assaulted by multiple ICE agents,” McIver told reporters at the time of the incident.
An attorney for McIver called the DOJ’s decision to charge the New Jersey congresswoman “spectacularly inappropriate.”
“She went to Delaney Hall to do her job. As a member of Congress, she has the right and responsibility to see how ICE is treating detainees. Rather than facilitating that inspection, ICE agents chose to escalate what should have been a peaceful situation into chaos. This prosecution is an attempt to shift the blame for ICE’s behavior to Congresswoman McIver,” Paul Fishman said in a statement.
But the Trump administration maintains McIver assaulted law enforcement and is being treated no differently than any other American would be.
“If it was a typical U.S. citizen, and they tried to storm into a detention facility that’s housing dangerous criminals or any person at all, they would be arrested,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said during an appearance on Fox News on Saturday. “Just because you are a member of Congress or just because you’re a public official does not mean you are above the law.”