Newark mayor Ras Baraka in handcuffs outside the Delaney Hall detention center in Newark, NJ on May 9, 2025.
Gracieuse: the office of the mayor of Newark
The Trump administration suggested on Saturday that the Democratic legislators of New Jersey involved in a confrontation one day earlier with the authorities of a federal immigration detention center which led to the arrest of the mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, could also face criminal charges.
“There will probably be more arrests to come,” the spokesman for the Ministry of Internal Security, Tricia McLaughlin, said on Saturday in an interview.
“We actually have images of body cameras from some of these members of the congress assaulting these ice application agents, including the body that slams an ice officer,” said McLaughlin.
Later, she tweeted a video of the chaotic incident outside the Delaney Hall immigration and customs application in Newark.
“We will not tolerate attacks against our agents of the application of ice laws. By members of the Congress or someone else,” wrote McLaglin in the position on X.
Alina Habba, the best federal prosecutor in New Jersey, in an interview on Fox News on Saturday, said: “I’m not going to enter weeds on other things that can come.”
The three legislators on the scene – the representatives Bonnie Watson Coleman, Rob Menendez and Lamonica McIiver – strongly dispute the characterization of the incident by the DHS.
Menendez accused the Trump administration of having propagated “lies and disinformation”.
“As members of the Congress, we have the legal right to carry out an establishment in the DHS without notice, as we have already done twice this year,” said Menendez in a statement on Friday.
“It’s like nothing of what I have ever seen before, and I am shocked and disturbed that something like it happened in our community,” he added.
But McLaughlin accused Democrats with a “bizarre political blow”.
“Congress members are not above the law and cannot illegally enter detention establishments,” McLaughlin said on Friday.
She said it was “an evolving situation”, keeping the door open to a later action.
The video shows an altercation between the legislators and the apparent demonstrators with the police by a security door at the detention center.
Coleman said on X that the fight had taken place after the legislators entered the installation.
“We entered the installation, returned to speak to the mayor, then the ice agents began to push us,” she said.
Axios first indicated that the DHS was considering additional arrests. CNBC confirmed the plans.
Baraka, who presents himself for the governor of New Jersey, was released without deposit on Friday evening. He was charged to the Newark Federal Court of an intrusion chief.
Habba, the interim lawyer of the American New Jersey, accused Baraka of having committed “intrusions and (ignoring) several warnings” of DHS officials “to withdraw from the center of detention of ice”.
