The mayor of Newark got taken in by the feds on Friday at an ICE detention facility in New Jersey while some big-shot leaders were planning to visit for an “oversight” trip later that day.
A spokesperson confirmed that Mayor Ras Baraka got nabbed by the federal police outside Delaney Hall in Newark. The spokesperson didn’t have any extra deets to spill. Alina Habba, the acting U.S. attorney for the district of New Jersey, said Baraka “committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to get out of the ICE detention center.”
“He’s all like, ‘I don’t care about the law.’ Well, that ain’t gonna fly in this state. They got him in custody,” a post on X said. Baraka had been checking out the facility recently while trying to shut down the recently reopened slammer. He’s been saying that the detention center doesn’t have the right permits to be running.
Some folks said the arrest went down after Baraka tried to join a tour of the facility with three members of New Jersey’s congressional team, Reps. Robert Menendez, LaMonica McIver, and Bonnie Watson Coleman. “We’re at Delaney Hall, an ICE prison in Newark that opened without permission from the city & in violation of local ordinances,” Rep. Coleman wrote on X.
When the feds blocked his entry, things got heated, according to Viri Martinez, a peep with the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice. The drama kept going even after Baraka went back to the public side of the gates. “The agents started intimidating and putting their hands on the congresswomen. There was yelling and pushing,” Martinez said. “Then the officers swarmed Baraka. They threw one of the organizers to the ground. They put Baraka in handcuffs and tossed him in an unmarked car.”
Baraka, a Dem who’s gunning for Gov. Phil Murphy’s spot, has been all about the fight with the Trump administration over illegal immigration. He’s been going hard against the building and opening of the 1,000-bed detention center, saying it shouldn’t open because of permit problems.
The two-story spot next to a county prison used to be a halfway house before ICE and the GEO Group said they were gonna drop $1 billion on a 15-year deal for a detention center there. Baraka sued GEO Group right after the deal was announced.
