Representative LaMonica McIver, a New Jersey Democrat, on Wednesday overcame a Republican-led effort to punish her for her role in a clash outside a migrant detention center in Newark that has become a hub of protest over President Trump’s deportation policies.
Ms. McIver, 39, was charged in May with assaulting and interfering with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents after a confrontation involving the city’s mayor, Ras J. Baraka.
She has pleaded not guilty. And on Wednesday afternoon seven Republicans joined with Democrats to block a resolution that would have led her to be censured and removed from the Committee on Homeland Security.
Ms. McIver, a first-term House member from Newark, was outside the detention center on May 9 when agents, wearing masks and camouflage gear, moved in to arrest Mr. Baraka on trespassing charges, leading to a volatile scrum. Video showed her pushing toward the gates and being pushed from behind after Mr. Baraka was handcuffed.
Ms. McIver was there for a House oversight visit and, immediately after the incident, was invited into the facility and led on a tour with two of her Democratic colleagues, Representatives Bonnie Watson Coleman and Rob Menendez.
Ten days later, Alina Habba, New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor, announced in a news release that she was dropping the trespassing charge against Mr. Baraka — but would pursue charges against Ms. McIver. A grand jury later handed up an indictment that accused Ms. McIver of “forcibly grabbing” one agent and “using her forearms” to strike a second agent as she sought to block the mayor’s arrest.
Representative Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican, moved to censure Ms. McIver and remove her from Homeland Security — a committee he quit last week, noting that he was no longer in sync with fellow Republican committee members who were “more in alignment with the less conservative factions of our conference.”
Mr. Higgins’s resolution argues that Ms. McIver’s actions “do not reflect creditably on the House” and that the charges she faced presented a conflict of interest on a committee that oversees federal immigration enforcement.
The House clerk who read the resolution aloud on Wednesday afternoon was repeatedly interrupted by a chorus of boos, only to be told: “Read over them.”
Then, Representative Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, the Democratic whip, moved to table the resolution, drawing supportive votes from Democrats and a handful of moderate Republicans and two Republican members of the Ethics Committee, who might eventually be asked to consider ethics violations tied to the incident.
The resolution could be reconsidered at a later date. An official in Mr. Higgins’s office said he had no immediate comment on the blocked resolution.
Ms. McIver reacted with trademark defiance on Tuesday night when it became clear that Mr. Clay’s effort to oust her from the committee would reach the House floor.
“Instead of making life any better for the people he represents, he’s seeking to punish me for doing what he and his caucus are too cowardly to do: conduct real oversight, stand up to this administration and do our jobs,” she said in a statement. “If House Republicans think they can make me run scared, they’re wrong.”
At the center of the controversy is the Newark detention center, which is known as Delaney Hall and is run by one of the country’s largest private prison companies, GEO Group. It has a contract with ICE to hold as many as 1,000 migrants at risk of deportation in its two-floor jailhouse.
In the weeks before Mr. Baraka’s arrest, he had argued in court and in visits to Delaney Hall that it had not been fully inspected and was operating without a valid certificate of occupancy.
His concerns about the safety of the facility proved prescient when, weeks later, unrest over food portions and crowding ended only after four men escaped through a jailhouse wall. The men lowered mattresses to the ground on June 13 and then lashed bedsheets together to escape, according to court records. The last of the four men was located and rearrested five weeks later.
Ms. Habba, a former personal lawyer to Mr. Trump, has led the U.S. attorney’s office since late March, courting controversy as she pursued high-profile cases against New Jersey Democrats. After district court judges declined to extend her tenure, the Justice Department resorted to an extraordinary series of legal maneuvers to keep her in office. That drew immediate legal challenges to her authority from several defendants in pending criminal cases.
Last month, a federal judge concluded that Ms. Habba has not been the lawful leader of the office since July 1, but he delayed the effect of the ruling until after the matter is reviewed by an appeals court, leaving the federal courts in New Jersey at a virtual standstill.
Tracey Tully is a reporter for The Times who covers New Jersey, where she has lived for more than 20 years.
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