Newark Mayor and top Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ras Baraka is speaking out following his arrest outside a New Jersey ICE facility on Friday, and the gleeful MAGA pile-on that followed.
Baraka was at the Delaney Hall detention center in Newark on Friday, where protests were taking place against the facility’s reopening. He was arrested at the site and charged with a Class C misdemeanor of federal trespass.
“Ras Baraka committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself,” Interim U.S. District Attorney for New Jersey, and President Donald Trump‘s former personal attorney, Alina Habba tweeted. “He has willingly chosen to disregard the law. That will not stand in this state.”
The Mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations 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…
— Alina Habba (@AlinaHabba) May 9, 2025
Pushing back on those claims, Baraka described the incident differently to MSNBC. “We were allowed on the property in the first place. Nothing happened for a long long time, at least over an hour,” Baraka said. “They finally told us to leave and I told them I was leaving. They came outside the gate and arrested me.”
“It looked like it was targeted,” Baraka stated.
Appearing on CNN‘s The Source with Kaitlan Collins, Baraka addressed Habba’s comments directly, saying she “doesn‘t know what happened” and that the arrest was the result of “escalation” by a Homeland Security Officer.
“She was not there, so she should get some better information,” he concluded.
The facility is the first immigration detention center to open since Trump took office again in January. Despite ongoing legal disputes over its operation, Delaney Hall began accepting detainees on May 1.
As mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka has a responsibility to ensure that facilities operating in the city are adhering to laws that protect the safety and wellbeing of occupants and residents.⁰This incident is disturbing, unnecessary and indicative of tactics that are undermining the…
— Sen. Cory Booker (@SenBooker) May 9, 2025
The arrest has been condemned by Democrats, with Sen. Cory Booker calling the incident “disturbing, unnecessary, and indicative of tactics that are undermining the safety and security of our communities.”
“Moreover,” Booker added, “the Trump administration‘s decision to reopen Delaney Hall, a private, for-profit prison in our community, should never have gone forward.”
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