Newark mayor arrested at ICE detention facility in New Jersey for alleged trespassing

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, a gubernatorial candidate in New Jersey, was arrested Friday at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility on trespassing costs.

His marketing campaign spokesperson, Kabir Moss, stated he didn’t know what crime Baraka had been charged with, however Alina Habba, the interim U.S. lawyer for the District of New Jersey, stated in a put up on X that Baraka trespassed and “ignored a number of warnings from Homeland Safety” officers to “take away himself from the ICE detention middle in Newark, New Jersey this afternoon.”

“He has willingly chosen to ignore the regulation. That won’t stand on this state,” Habba added.

Baraka is one in every of six main Democratic candidates competing within the gubernatorial main on June 10.

Photographs supplied by Baraka’s workplace present the mayor being escorted by regulation enforcement together with his arms behind his again.

Baraka seems to stay custody, in line with an announcement from Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, who known as for his launch.

“Mayor Baraka is an exemplary public servant who has all the time stood up for our most susceptible neighbors. I’m calling for his fast launch by federal regulation enforcement,” Murphy stated in an announcement Friday afternoon.

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Democratic members of the New Jersey congressional delegation, together with Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, had been additionally on the ICE detention facility on Friday. Coleman stated in a put up on X that they had been “exercising our oversight authority to see for ourselves” what it is like on the facility.

“We’re at Delaney Corridor, an ICE jail in Newark that opened with out permission from the town & in violation of native ordinances,” Coleman wrote on Friday afternoon, lower than an hour earlier than Habba posted about Baraka’s arrest.

A spokesperson for Coleman stated that the lawmaker was with Reps. LaMonica McIver and Rob Menendez after they had been “escorted in” to the Delaney Corridor Detention Middle after “a interval of explaining the regulation to the officers.”

Spokespeople for McIver and Menendez didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.