Newark mayor sues federal prosecutor after arrest at immigration detention site
Newark mayor Ras Baraka has sued New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor over his arrest on a trespassing charge, which was later dropped, at a federal immigration detention facility.
Mr Baraka, who leads New Jersey’s biggest city, is a candidate in a crowded primary field for the Democratic nomination for governor next Tuesday.
The lawsuit against interim US Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba coincided with the day early in-person voting began.
The lawsuit seeks damages for “false arrest and malicious prosecution”, and also accuses Ms Habba of defamation for comments she made about his case.
Citing a post on X in which Ms Habba said Mr Baraka “committed trespass”, the lawsuit says Ms Habba issued a “defamatory statement” and authorised his “false arrest” despite “clear evidence that Mayor Baraka had not committed the petty offence of ‘defiant trespass’.”
The suit also names Ricky Patel, the Homeland Security Investigations agent in charge in Newark.
Emails seeking comment were left with Ms Habba’s office and the Homeland Security Department, where Mr Patel works.
The episode outside the Delaney Hall federal immigration detention centre has had dramatic fallout.
It began on May 9 when Mr Baraka tried to join three Democratic members of Congress — Rob Menendez, LaMonica McIver and Bonnie Watson Coleman — who went to the facility for an oversight tour, something authorised under federal law.
Mr Baraka, an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and the detention centre, was denied entry.
Video from the event showed him walking from the facility side of the fence to the street side, where other people had been protesting, and then uniformed officials came to arrest him.
As they did, people could be heard in the video saying to protect the mayor. The video shows a crowd forming and pushing as officials led off a handcuffed Baraka.
He was initially charged with trespass, but Ms Habba dropped that charge and charged Ms McIver with two counts of assaulting officers stemming from her role in the skirmish at the facility’s gate.
Ms McIver decried the charges and signalled she plans to fight them. A preliminary hearing is scheduled later this month.
Delaney Hall, a 1,000-bed facility, opened earlier this year as a federal immigration detention facility.
Florida-based Geo Group Inc, which owns and operates the property, was awarded a 15-year contract valued at one billion dollars in February.
The announcement was part of the president’s plans to sharply increase detention beds nationwide from a budget of about 41,000 beds this year.
Mr Baraka sued Geo soon after that deal was announced.
Then, on May 23, the Trump Justice Department filed a suit against Newark and three other New Jersey cities over their so-called sanctuary policies.
There is no legal definition for sanctuary city policies, but they generally limit co-operation by local law enforcement with federal immigration officers.
New Jersey’s attorney general has a statewide directive in place prohibiting local police from collaborating in federal civil immigration matters. The policies are aimed at barring co-operation on civil enforcement matters, not at blocking cooperation on criminal matters.
They specifically carve out exceptions for when Immigration and Customs Enforcement supplies police with a judicial criminal warrant. The Justice Department said, though, the cities will not notify ICE when they have made criminal arrests, according to the suit.
It is unclear whether Mr Baraka’s role in these fights with the Trump administration is having an effect on his campaign for governor.
He is one of six candidates seeking the Democratic nomination in the June 10 election to succeed term-limited Democratic governor Phil Murphy.
In a video ad in the election’s final weeks, Mr Baraka has embraced a theme his rivals are also pushing: affordability. He says he will cut taxes.
While some of the images show him standing in front of what appears to be Delaney Hall, he does not mention immigration or the arrest specifically, saying: “I’ll keep Trump out of your homes and out of your lives.”
Mr Trump has endorsed Jack Ciattarelli, one of several Republicans running in the gubernatorial primary. Mr Ciattarelli has said if he is elected, his first executive order would be to end any sanctuary policies for immigrants in the country illegally.
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