Speaking after his arrest on Tuesday, the mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, said that his city would continue his struggle in court against the company which led an immigration detention center in New Jersey.
“I know there are demonstrations that the others plan, and if I feel obliged to be there, I will do it,” Baraka told Reverend Al Sharpton on MSNBC on Saturday afternoon. “This does not stop the city’s statements with the GEO group, and we will continue in court with them.”
Baraka was arrested Tuesday morning after joining three members of the congress at a protest and press conference in front of a new immigration and customs detention center (ICE) located in Newark known as Delaney Hall.
He was arrested by internal security agents and placed in police custody in a separate installation in Newark. The mayor was released about five hours later and in charge of intrusion.
Meanwhile, the spokesman for the Ministry of Internal Security, Tricia McLaughlin, told CNN on Saturday morning that “there will be more arrests to come” after the demonstration at the establishment, affirming that the arrests of the three Democratic members of Congress who were there – Bonnie Watson Coleman, Rob Menendez and Lamonica McIiver – are “on the table”.
McLoughlin told CNN that legislators “endangered the police, which endangered prisoners in danger” and said that the DHS had “images of bodily cameras of some of these members of the Congress attacking our agents of ice application”.
Newark continued Geo Group after the company won a $ 15 billion contract with Ice to lead Delaney Hall, saying that the company renovated the installation without appropriate permit and that city inspectors had been prohibited from entering the center.
Federal officials and representatives of Geo Group denied the allegations and told the New York Times that the company had the appropriate permits, claiming that the arrest of Baraka was a “advertising by the mayor”, who also presents himself in the race to the Governor of the State.
“The mayor has been informed that he is more than welcome to enter the installation, as long as he follows security protocols like everyone else,” McLoughlin told Times.
During the demonstration on Tuesday, Baraka joined Coleman, Menendez and McIiver, who was authorized to enter the establishment as part of a surveillance visit.
In a video examined by the New York Times, an internal security agent told Baraka that he could not enter the installation like the members of the Congress, or he would be arrested.
Baraka, who was in a crowd of people, told Sharpton that he had left the entrance doors “several times”, and he was finally arrested outside the doors of the installations. Baraka insists that he “did nothing wrong”.
Baraka told Sharpton that Dhs “treated us as a regular case”.
“I was placed in the cell, I was given a cup, fingerprints, accused of a federal intrusion crime,” said Baraka, adding that the police “treated (him) quite well”.
Baraka stressed that the federal government did not share information on which was kept in the detention center.
“We don’t know what’s going on in there, we don’t know who is in there. They do not allow inspectors. They do not comply with local laws,” said Baraka. “They feel like they don’t have to go to court.”
