Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was reportedly arrested on Friday while protesting the opening of Delaney Hall, a new federal immigration detention center, per the Washington Post.
According to Interim U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, Alina Habba, Barraka was arrested for allegedly trespassing.
“The Mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself from the ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey this afternoon,” Habba wrote on X. “He has willingly chosen to disregard the law. That will not stand in this state. He has been taken into custody. NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW.”
Politico reports that the arrest came shortly after a “chaotic” scene in Delaney Hall’s parking lot, involving three other representatives from Congress: Bonnie Watson Coleman, Rob Menendez, and LaMonica McIver. Witnesses told the Washington Post that a heated argument broke out when federal agents blocked his attempt to join a scheduled tour of the facility with the listed congress members.
“The agents started intimidating and putting their hands on the congresswomen. There was yelling and pushing,” Viri Martinez, an activist with the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice, 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.”
“They just arrested Mayor Ras J. Baraka at ICE detention center Delaney Hall in Newark. I was a very aggressive move by the ICE agents who pushed Baraka even after he complied with their orders to exit the main gate,” one user who claims to have been at the scene wrote on social media.
This month, the Trump administration reopened the 1,000-bed immigration detention center despite an ongoing lawsuit between the city of Newark and the facility’s private owners, the GEO Group.
According to the mayor’s office, he is being held at an ICE field office, per Pix11.
