Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, a gubernatorial candidate in New Jersey, was arrested Friday at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility on trespassing charges.
His campaign spokesperson, Kabir Moss, said he did not know what crime Baraka had been charged with, but Alina Habba, the interim U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, said in a post on X that Baraka trespassed and “ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security” officials to “remove himself from the ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey this afternoon.”
“He has willingly chosen to disregard the law. That will not stand in this state,” Habba added.
Baraka is one of six major Democratic candidates competing in the gubernatorial prim on June 10.
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Democratic members of the New Jersey congressional delegation, including Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, were also at the ICE detention facility on Friday. Coleman said in a post on X that they were “exercising our oversight authority to see for ourselves” what it’s like at the facility.
“We’re at Delaney Hall, an ICE prison in Newark that opened without permission from the city & in violation of local ordinances,” Coleman said in a post on X Friday afternoon, less than an hour before Habba posted about Baraka’s arrest.
A spokesperson for Coleman said that the lawmaker was with Reps. LaMonica McIver and Rob Menendez when they were “escorted in” to the Delaney Hall Detention Center after “a period of explaining the law to the officials.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
