A criminal complaint made public on Tuesday laid out the U.S. government’s claims against Representative LaMonica McIver, depicting her as a ringleader who assaulted two federal agents as she tried to block the arrest of Newark’s mayor, Ras J. Baraka, outside a federal migrant detention facility.
Ms. McIver, a New Jersey Democrat, was charged with two counts of “assaulting, resisting and impeding certain officers or employees.” She has flatly rejected the government’s depiction of the events of May 9, when she and two other members of Congress went to the new detention center in Newark for an oversight visit, which they have the right to conduct under federal law.
Alina Habba, the interim U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, suggested in a statement announcing the charges late Monday that Ms. McIver had refused an offer to settle the criminal case, but offered no details.
Ms. McIver told CNN Monday night that the Justice Department “wanted me to admit to doing something that I did not do.”
“I came there to do my job and conduct an oversight visit. And they wanted me to say something differently,” said Ms. McIver, 38, who represents New Jersey’s 10th Congressional District, which includes most of Newark.
Tuesday morning, near her congressional office in Washington, she described the charges as “political intimidation” and likened them to the indictment of a Wisconsin judge who was accused of helping an undocumented immigrant elude federal agents.
The Newark detention center, known as Delaney Hall, is run by GEO Group, one of the country’s largest private prison companies. It can house as many as 1,000 detainees at a time and is expected to play a key role in President Trump’s mass deportation efforts.
It began housing migrants this month and has since become a focal point of protest.
It is rare for the Department of Justice to pursue federal criminal charges against a sitting member of Congress for matters other than corruption or campaign finance violations.
Democrats cast the charges as a significant escalation of the Trump administration’s efforts to tamp down opposition of its immigration agenda, while some Republicans called for the censure of the lawmakers and the expulsion of Ms. McIver.
The saga is likely to force a broader political showdown in Congress over the separation of powers as Mr. Trump strives to greatly expand his executive authority and Democrats struggle to push back.
The May 9 clash occurred after Mr. Baraka, a Democrat running for governor of New Jersey, had tried to accompany Ms. McIver and the two other lawmakers during their oversight tour of the facility.
Mr. Baraka was allowed within the center’s gated perimeter by a security guard who “was under the impression that the mayor was part of the congressional delegation,” according to the criminal complaint. But he was barred from joining them inside the building.
Mr. Baraka has said that he and several aides stood within the gate for more than an hour, waiting for the lawmakers to leave the facility, before being asked to leave.
In the complaint, Robert Tansey, a special agent with the Department of Homeland Security, said that “after numerous warnings to leave,” Mr. Baraka had been told that he was about to be placed under arrest.
Ms. McIver interjected, Mr. Tansey said, “yelling, ‘Hell no! Hell no! Hell no!’”
According to video footage, a guard opened the locked front gate and Mr. Baraka walked out.
Video footage and witness accounts depict a large scrum of people being jostled together as masked agents in camouflage uniforms, some carrying guns in holsters, come out from behind a gate to take Mr. Baraka into custody in a public area swarming with protesters. Ms. McIver and the two other members of Congress — Representatives Bonnie Watson Coleman and Rob Menendez — can be seen surrounding the mayor as the agents move in.
Ms. McIver, in an effort to use her body to prevent the mayor’s arrest, “slammed her forearm” into an agent and “tried to restrain” him by “forcibly grabbing him,” Mr. Tansey attested.
After Mr. Baraka was handcuffed, Ms. McIver pushed an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent and “used each of her forearms to forcibly strike” the officer, he wrote.
Ms. Habba, in the statement announcing the charges against Ms. McIver, also said that the Justice Department had dropped the trespassing charges against the mayor.
Susan Vercheak, 74, a lawyer from Maplewood, N.J., said she believed that prosecutors had recognized that they “had no case whatsoever” against Mr. Baraka.
“There was no basis for federal jurisdiction, so they chickened out,” said Ms. Vercheak, who was one of about 30 protesters who gathered early Tuesday outside Ms. Habba’s office in Newark as Democratic lawmakers continued to forcefully question the government’s decision to charge Ms. McIver.
Senator Andy Kim, Democrat of New Jersey, said the decision to charge Ms. McIver had “nothing to do with enforcing the law, and everything to do with this administration’s attempt to intimidate those who dare speak against them or expose the truth.”
The fallout has already led the Homeland Security Department, which houses the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, to draft changes to strengthen its rules on congressional visits to detention centers, according to an internal document obtained by The New York Times.
ICE is working to update its guidance to clarify that visitors, including members of Congress and their staff members, “may be subject to arrest or other legal action” if they fail to comply with the agency’s security rules, the document said. The agency is considering language that would allow it to deny or terminate a congressional visit for a number of reasons, and to expressly bar visitors from coercing or intimidating agents or detainees.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, did not address the changes being considered, but said that ICE “respects Congress’s oversight authority.”
“However, they are not above the law,” she said. “All members and staff need to comply with facility rules, procedures and instructions from ICE personnel on site for their own safety, the safety of the detainees and the safety of ICE employees.”
The charges against Ms. McIver call into question a constitutional protection known as the speech or debate clause, which offers lawmakers a broad degree of protection from criminal penalties that stem from actions taken while performing legislative duties.
Last week, after a spokeswoman for the Trump administration said that charges against Ms. McIver, Ms. Watson Coleman and Mr. Menendez were possible, the Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York, said that any criminal charges represented a “red line.”
“There are clear lines that they just dare not cross,” he warned.
On Monday, Mr. Jeffries said in a joint statement with other top House Democrats that the charges were “a blatant attempt by the Trump administration to intimidate Congress and interfere with our ability to serve as a check and balance on an out-of-control executive branch.”
Homeland Security officials welcomed the charges after days of arguing that the clash was emblematic of the broader threat its ICE agents faced as they ramped up immigration arrests and deportations.
“No one is above the law,” Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland secretary, said in a statement. “If any person, regardless of political party, influence or status, assaults a law enforcement officer as we witnessed Congresswoman McIver do, you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
Mark Bonamo contributed reporting.
Tracey Tully is a reporter for The Times who covers New Jersey, where she has lived for more than 20 years.
Luis Ferré-Sadurní is a Times reporter covering immigration, focused on the influx of migrants arriving in the New York region.
Hamed Aleaziz covers the Department of Homeland Security and immigration policy for The Times.
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