Newark’s Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested on Friday (May 9) at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center, the opening of which he had been fighting.
Footage surfaced online of Baraka being led away in handcuffs from the Delaney Hall ICE facility. In a message posted on X, Interim US Attorney for the District of New Jersey Alina Habba wrote that Baraka “committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself from the ICE detention in Newark, New Jersey this afternoon.”
“He has willingly chosen to disregard the law. That will not stand in this state. He has been taken into custody,” added Habba. “NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW.”
Baraka’s arrest occurred after he attempted to join a visit to the facility by several New Jersey Democratic congress officials — Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman, Rob Menendez and LaMonica McIver.
“We’re at Delaney Hall, an ICE prison in Newark that opened without permission from the city & in violation of local ordinances,” wrote Coleman on X, also sharing pictures and videos of the scene.
AP News reports that when Baraka attempted to enter the facility, he was blocked by federal officials. Because of this, a heated argument occurred.
“There was yelling and pushing,” activist Viri Martinez told the outlet. “Then the officers swarmed Baraka. They threw one of the organizers to the ground. They put Baraka in handcuffs and put him in an unmarked car.”
The mayor was transported to a Homeland Security field office in Newark.
The Department of Homeland Security claimed in a statement that as a bus that carried detainees entered the facility, “a group of protestors, including two members of the U.S. House of Representatives, stormed the gate and broke into the detention facility.”
Coleman issued a statement afterwards contradicting the DHS’ claim, writing, “The author of that press release was so unfamiliar with the facts on the ground that they didn’t even correctly count the number of Representatives present. We were exercising our legal oversight function as we have done at the Elizabeth Detention Center without incident.”
According to New Jersey Monitor reporter Sophie Nieto-Muñoz, Baraka was released around 8 p.m.
Baraka first visited the facility on May 6th on the day of its reopening (it was previously a prison) and claimed that it didn't have the required permits it needed to be operational. He also claimed that a previous inspection of the facility by officials found “violations that put first responders at risk, violations that put detainees at risk and workers that are there at risk” and accused ICE of turning away local fire inspectors.
The mayor promised that he’d come back to Delaney Hall every day to protest it until it closed.