By Lauren Burke
Congresswoman LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) was charged with “assaulting and impeding” ICE officials by acting U.S. Attorney Alina Habba. “Today my office has charged Congresswoman McIver with violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 111(a)(1) for assaulting, impeding, and interfering with law enforcement,” Habba wrote in a statement after the U.S. House voted on the evening of May 19. Habba also announced her office was dropping previously filed charges against Mayor Ras Baraka for “trespassing.” “Earlier this month, I joined my colleagues to inspect the treatment of ICE detainees at Delaney Hall in my district. We were fulfilling our lawful oversight responsibilities, as members of Congress have done many times before, and our visit should have been peaceful and short. Instead, ICE agents created an unnecessary and unsafe confrontation when they chose to arrest Mayor Baraka,” McIver said in a statement posted on social media.
The charges against Rep. McIver are a rare escalation of executive authority by the Trump Administration against a member of Congress. Though ICE or the Secret Service could be involved in national security or immigration, there is no known public case that has involved a DHS-led arrest of a sitting member of Congress. The charges against Rep. McIver occur after a fracas between ICE officials and elected officials and their staff at Delaney Hall Immigration Detention Center in Newark, New Jersey on May 9. The confrontation led to the arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka. Though the Mayor was later released, the arrest of a Mayor for “trespassing” visiting a facility in his city is also unheard of. U.S. Representatives Robert Menendez, Jr. (D-NJ) and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ) were also a part of May 9 visit to Delaney Hall Immigration detention center. Members of Congress have a constitutional right to inspect ICE facilities and conduct oversight. They can also request visits and meetings with detainees. Reps. Rep. McIver, Rep. Menendez, and Watson Coleman were accused of “breaking into Delaney Hall” in a statement by the Department of Homeland Security entitled, “Members of Congress Break into Delaney Hall Detention Center.”
The Delaney Hall facility is owned by Geo Group, a billion-dollar revenue-generating company that invests in private prisons. The acting U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, Alina Habba was a spokesperson for President Donald Trump, and a senior advisor for MAGA, Inc., Trump’s Super PAC, from 2021 and 2025. Other cases of the executive branch arresting members of the legislative branch include Rep. James Traficant, who was later convicted of bribery in 2002 and spent seven years in prison, Rep. Williams Jefferson in 2007, who was later convicted of bribery and sentenced to 13 years, Rep. Michael Grimm, who in 2024 was arrested for tax fraud and resigned from Congress in 2014 and Rep. Duncan Hunter, who was charged in 2018 with campaign finance violations and then pardoned by President Trump in 2022. Rep. McIver, 38, entered Congress in September 2024 after winning a special election after the death of Congressman Donald Payne, Jr.
