Labor and community organizations came together with faith leaders and elected officials outside the federal court in Newark, N.J. Wednesday morning, June 25. They rallied to defend Rep. LaMonica McIver, D-N.J., and demand that the Trump administration drop charges being brought against her.
McIver angered federal officers for simply trying to exercise her oversight responsibilities, as a member of Congress, of ICE facilities. She was falsely charged with assaulting an officer when it was the ICE agents who were shoving and pushing her and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka.
Participants also conducted a “Jericho walk” and speak out in the park adjacent to the building.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office is charging the Congressional member, a Black woman, with three counts of assault against Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents following her participation with a May 9 congressional oversight inspection of Delaney Hall, an ICE detention center in Newark. The Congresswoman has refused to take a plea deal.
“She pled not guilty because she is not guilty,” her lawyer Paul Fishman firmly stated to loud cheers.
The charges come with the threat of 17 years in prison. “Congresswoman McIver is being persecuted” and “politically targeted by Donald Trump and his administration” for “just doing her job,” Assatta Mann of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice said.
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka had participated with the inspection, along with Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman and Robert Menendez Jr. Suddenly, the federal agents initiated a confrontation that day with the elected officials and illegally arrested Mayor Baraka.
“HSI and ICE created a risky and dangerous situation,” Fishman said to the media.
Viri Martinez of NJ Alliance for Immigrant Justice shared her experience of the chaos on May 9. “To see masked and military grade, fully armed agents swarm our Congresspeople and the Mayor of Newark was petrifying.”
The detention facility is being operated by private prison corporation Geo Group without permits from the City of Newark. Most recently, the detention center made the news after starved detainees managed to knock down a wall of the facility and escape the horrific conditions inside, including denied visitation rights.
“Obviously, we know that the place is not being run properly because people are escaping from there,” Mayor Baraka said during his address. “And if the people who escaped were robbers and murderers, why didn’t they alert the state police and local police?” he asked. “Because there are no dangerous criminals. The only dangerous criminals are in the White House!”
“This is their opportunity to put their foot on our necks. … The same thing that they’re doing here domestically is what they’re doing in Iran.”
People’s Organization for Progress chairman Lawrence Hamm pledged: “We will mobilize this and bring people to this court until the trial is concluded, and until we get justice.”
Nathan Duguid, founder and president of the Young Voters Association and a Rutgers University student, talked about how “they’re not just targeting our Representatives. They’re targeting young people on college campuses [who] want to use their freedom of speech.” He also blasted Democratic Congressional members who voted with Republicans against impeaching Trump “for his war crimes in the Middle East.”
Maria Montesinos of Make the Road NJ called on representatives across the country to follow McIver’s example and “seek accountability for what is happening behind the closed doors of private immigration detention facilities.”
“The design of immigration detention is one that has cruelty and inhumanity, and indignity built into it,” Ami Kachalia from ACLU of New Jersey protested.
New Jersey Working Families Party state director Antoinette Miles highlighted the attacks on elected officials of color and asserted, “The Black woman is the most neglected,” and “disrespected in America … and “the most progressive.” She called for uniting the working class and building the “widest movement possible to say that we are not going to take it anymore.”
An American Friends Service Committee activist demanded N.J. representatives put the state-level Immigrant Trust Act “at the top of the agenda.”
“This is all about political intimidation,” the Congresswoman said to her supporters following her arraignment. “The Trump Administration and his cronies have weaponized the federal government.”
“They will not intimidate me,” she said. “I will continue to do what the people of the 10th Congressional District elected me to do,” at the same time promising, “We’re going to take this all the way through. They know they’re wrong, and we’re going to prove them wrong, because the facts are on our side.”
“To each and every one of you who are here … who continue to stand up to this administration,” Rep. McIver urged all those present: “Do not back down.”
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