Dem Rep McIver expected to make first court appearance after Newark incident
New Jersey Rep. LaMonica McIver will make her first court appearance virtually Wednesday after being charged with assaulting two federal agents at an immigrant detention facility in Newark earlier this month.
McIver was there with two other members of Congress on May 9 to conduct what they claimed were their congressionally mandated oversight duties, as was Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who was subsequently arrested following the incident but later had his charges dropped.
The Democrat will appear via video screen in front of a United States Magistrate Judge for the District of New Jersey at 11 a.m. and be read her rights and charges. The judge will then decide her bail package.
"I think the charges are absurd. You know, it's ridiculous. I was there to do my job along with my other colleagues. We have done this before. This is our obligation to do. It's in our job description to have oversight over a facility. And the entire situation was escalated by ICE," McIver said during an appearance on CNN Tuesday.
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"They caused the confrontation. Homeland came and caused this chaos that we see. It was a very tense situation, but it could have been easily not, it could've easily not happened. They had every opportunity to not allow this to happen. It was very unnecessary. And it just, once again, we were there to do our jobs," she added. "And if I'm going to be charged with a crime for doing my job, it just speaks to where we're headed in this country and what we are dealing with as leaders and as congress members, you know, here in this country."
The court said it approved a request from McIver and her legal team that she be allowed to appear virtually.
A charging document cites bodycam footage from law enforcement officers who recorded events as McIver and two other New Jersey lawmakers stormed the ICE facility. Prosecutors say the first officer McIver allegedly assaulted was a Homeland Security Investigations agent, and the second was an ICE agent.
The Justice Department accuses McIver of having "slammed her forearm into the body of a uniformed HSI agent and reached out and tried to restrain the agent by forcibly grabbing him."
The charging document also states that McIver "pushed an ICE officer & used her forearms to forcibly strike the agent."
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McIver rejected the charges in a public statement, arguing they are "purely political."
"Earlier this month, I joined my colleagues to inspect the treatment of ICE detainees at Delaney Hall in my district," she wrote. "We were fulfilling our lawful oversight responsibilities, as members of Congress have done many times before, and our visit should have been peaceful and short. Instead, ICE agents created an unnecessary and unsafe confrontation when they chose to arrest Mayor Baraka."
Witnesses told The Associated Press that the arrest happened after Baraka attempted to join McIver and New Jersey Reps. Robert Menendez and Bonnie Watson Coleman when entering the facility. When federal officials denied Baraka access, an argument then broke out, the AP reported, citing an activist with the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice.
Prosecutors said McIver helped create a "human shield" and blocked agents from handcuffing Baraka after he ignored numerous warnings to leave the property and was told he would be arrested.
Fox News' Alexis McAdams, Anders Hagstrom and Alec Schemmel contributed to this report.