HARRISBURG, Pa. — When the U.S. Department of Homeland Security publicized the arrest of a Nigerian man for indecent exposure this week, it included a political attack that’s drawing complaints from Democrats and a nonpartisan government watchdog.
The department’s news release alleges that the man worked for a Democratic congressional candidate in a Pennsylvania battleground district, an unusual reference to a high-profile midterm contest.
“It’s unbelievable that Janelle Stelson would employ an illegal alien to work on a congressional campaign, let alone a pervert who exposed himself in public,” Charles Wall, deputy director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in the news release.
A police report said the man had fliers for Stelson in his vehicle. Stelson denied that the man was a campaign employee.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions about how it established the man worked for Stelson. Its news release cited a news report quoting a conservative activist who asserted the connection.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a complaint Thursday with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, calling the department’s attack on Stelson a blatant violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits government officials from using their official positions to influence elections.
Donald Sherman, who leads CREW, said he’d never seen anything like the department’s statement, where a law enforcement agency “goes out of its way” to reference a campaign affiliation in a news release that has nothing to do with election-related crimes.
The news release is “consistent with the message that the administration and that the president has sent from the top that ICE is to be involved in elections, regardless of what the law says,” Sherman said.
Stelson, a former local television personality, is running for the second time against Republican Rep. Scott Perry in Pennsylvania’s 10th Congressional District. It’s expected to be one of the races that determines control of the U.S. House in the November midterms.
“If he is an illegal immigrant who committed a crime he should be deported,” Stelson’s campaign said. “We never heard of him prior to the news of his arrest. We are grateful to law enforcement for acting swiftly to arrest him.”
President Trump’s administration is already under scrutiny for using federal resources for political purposes. The Department of Homeland Security has spent millions of taxpayer dollars on advertisements glorifying Trump and promoting his campaign messaging, drawing a pair of lawsuits and bipartisan backlash.
According to a police report obtained by the Associated Press, Chimaobim Adedayo Igbojekwe was arrested by an East Pennsboro Township police officer on Sept. 27 after a report of a suspicious vehicle parked next to a public park on a residential street in the Harrisburg suburb.
The officer wrote that, when Igbojekwe opened the door to talk to the officer, he noticed that Igbojekwe’s “genitals were exposed.”
Igbojekwe told the officer he was “in the neighborhood for work and that he was waiting to hand out [fliers] for Janelle Stelson’s political campaign,” according to the report. Igbojekwe produced a stack of fliers, the officer wrote.
It’s not clear whether the man was working as a paid canvasser for another organization.
Igbojekwe was charged with disorderly conduct and indecent exposure. He pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct, courts records say, and later was arrested by ICE.
Homeland Security said Igbojekwe entered the country legally in 2017 but remained past his “authorized period.” He was granted deferred action in 2021.
Igbojekwe’s public defender did not return a call about the case.
Levy writes for the Associated Press.
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