Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested at a new U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in his city on Friday, escalating tensions between local officials and federal authorities tasked with carrying out President Donald Trump’s immigration efforts.
Baraka, who is running for governor of New Jersey, is accused of trespassing and ignoring “multiple warnings” from Homeland Security officials to leave the detention facility, according to Alina Habba, Trump’s former lawyer and current acting U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey. The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that Baraka and other Democratic members of Congress had joined protests outside the center on Friday and that they “stormed the gate and broke into the detention facility” as a busload of detainees was entering the security gate.
Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, suggested that the lawmakers had “impeded” immigration enforcement. “They can stand out and scream all they want,” Homan told Fox News in an interview on Saturday morning. “They’ll be arrested. If they impede, they’ll be arrested.”
But Baraka and other Democrats at the scene, Reps. Robert Menendez, LaMonica McIver and Bonnie Watson Coleman, have disputed the federal government’s account of the incident.
Baraka told MSNBC’s Jen Psaki in an interview on Friday night that he was not there to protest but to hold a press conference with his fellow Democrats. “I knew I wasn’t going to get in the building with them. I was waiting for them to return from outside of the building to participate in the press conference with them,” he said, adding that he believed he was “targeted.”
The incident Friday further inflames tensions between local officials and the Trump administration as the latter seeks to expand its mass deportation efforts.
The mayor has paid multiple visits to Delaney Hall, the 1,000-bed facility run by private prison company GEO Group. He and other local officials allege that it does not have the proper city permits to be operating, a claim that GEO Group denies.
According to The Associated Press, witnesses said Baraka tried to join the congressional delegation to enter the facility. When he was told he could not because he was not a member of Congress, he then moved to the public side of the fence before he was arrested.
Watson Coleman accused DHS of lying about the events that led to Baraka’s arrest, saying the confrontation with federal agents occurred only after the congressional delegation had visited the facility.
Baraka said he couldn’t speak to the case but that he faces a misdemeanor trespassing charge and will soon have to appear in court. The mayor was released later on Friday from the Homeland Security Investigations Newark office, telling a crowd outside that he had done nothing wrong. “What’s happening now in this country, everybody should be scared of,” he said.
