A New Jersey Democratic congresswoman hit back at the White House for “lying” about the circumstances of a mayor’s arrest outside an ICE facility in Newark.
“The president of the United States opens his mouth every day and lies—he can’t breathe without lying,” New Jersey Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman told CNN.
Coleman was one of several Democratic Party representatives who witnessed the arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka during what was meant to have been a tour of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in New Jersey’s largest city.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, has since threatened to arrest other Democratic Party representatives who were present at the Delaney Hall Detention Center on Friday, accusing them of “body-slamming” ICE officials guarding the site.
“How ridiculous does that sound?” said 80-year-old Watson Coleman, who has been slapped with misdemeanor trespassing charges. “They’re 200 pounds, they’ve got about 35 pounds worth of stuff about them, including a gun on their arms.”
She then repeated her accusation during the Saturday interview that President Trump has normalised peddling falsehoods at the White House and said this was the reason McLaughlin now felt confident “lying” to the American people about what had happened.
“I was there—I saw it, I was a part of it, I was in the middle of it,” Watson Coleman said. “We did not in any way, shape or form disrespect the physicality of any of those ICE agents, and to say so is just to perpetuate the kind of lying that we’re experiencing in this country at the highest levels–and it’s disgusting.”
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