The Trump administration charged Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) on Monday following a chaotic confrontation at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in New Jersey earlier this month.
The acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey, Alina Habba, announced on social platform X that she was charging McIver with assaulting, impeding, and interfering with law enforcement. “No one is above the law — politicians or otherwise,” Habba said in a statement. “It is the job of this office to uphold Justice, regardless of who you are. Now we will let the justice system work.”
McIver said that the charges against her are “purely political” and “mischaracterize and distort my actions and are meant to criminalize and deter legislative oversight.” In a statement, McIver said that the “administration will never stop me from working for the people in our district and standing up for what is right,” adding that she “[looks] forward to the truth being laid out clearly in court.”
Earlier this month, Democratic New Jersey Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman, Rob Menendez, and McIver visited New Jersey’s Delaney Hall, an ICE detention facility, to conduct oversight, as is their legal right. The center was recently reopened amid opposition from immigrants’ rights groups, and the city of Newark filed a lawsuit in April to halt occupancy and construction. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka has argued that the facility should not be allowed to open due to building permit issues.
Baraka was arrested outside the facility on a trespassing charge. In her announcement Monday, Habba said that the charges against Mayor Baraka would be dropped “for the sake of moving forward.”
The Department of Homeland Security accused McIver of “ASSAULTING an ICE agent” during the Democratic officials’ visit this month, posting a video showing a chaotic scene, with McIver attempting to get through a crowd of law enforcement officers who are pushing people. The video includes a clip that has been slowed down to emphasize McIver apparently pushing an ICE agent, who appears to have stopped walking right in front of her near the gate.
“Yesterday, at Delaney Hall, I witnessed firsthand the chaos and cruelty that defines the Trump administration’s immigration policy,” McIver said in a previous statement. “As we have done before, we went to conduct lawful congressional oversight — to do our jobs and demand answers for our constituents. We were met with contempt, disrespect, and aggression from ICE.”
McIver accused the Trump administration of “roughing up members of Congress,” adding that the incident shows the president’s “blatant abuses of power.”
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