Representative LaMonica McIver, a New Jersey Democrat accused of assaulting federal agents at a troubled migrant detention center in Newark, pleaded not guilty on Wednesday during a brief court appearance.
The Justice Department charged Ms. McIver after a clash between lawmakers and immigration officers during the arrest of the city’s mayor outside the privately run detention center, which has become a flashpoint in President Trump’s deportation crackdown.
Ms. McIver is one of a handful of politicians across the United States who have publicly opposed Mr. Trump’s immigration policies to be charged in clashes with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in recent weeks.
“I’m not guilty, and we will fight this,” Ms. McIver told dozens of supporters gathered outside the federal courthouse.
“We’re going to take this all the way through,” she added. “They know they’re wrong, and we’re going to prove them wrong because the facts are on our side.”
Ms. McIver and two House colleagues were at the Newark facility, Delaney Hall, on May 9 for a congressional oversight visit. The city’s mayor, Ras J. Baraka, had argued that the 1,000-bed jailhouse had opened prematurely, without the required permits. (Mr. Baraka’s concerns took on new urgency several weeks later, after four detainees used bedsheets to escape through a hole in the wall after tension over food rations and crowding boiled over.)
During Ms. McIver’s visit, masked agents, dressed in camouflage, came out from behind the facility’s gated perimeter to surround Mr. Baraka in an area swarming with protesters, according to video taken by immigrant rights activists, congressional aides and news reporters.
That unleashed a chaotic onrush, during which Ms. McIver could be seen pushing toward Mr. Baraka, who was charged with trespassing, and being pushed from behind. After the clash, Ms. McIver, 39, was permitted back onto the private property and then given a tour of Delaney Hall. The facility is operated by one of the country’s largest private prison companies, GEO Group, which has a lucrative, 15-year contract with the Trump administration to house migrants facing deportation.
Less than two weeks later, Alina Habba, the interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey, announced in a news release that she was dropping the case against Mr. Baraka — but was charging Ms. McIver.
Prosecutors have said that Ms. McIver acted as a ringleader and assaulted two federal agents as she tried to block the arrest of Mr. Baraka, who at the time was running for governor of New Jersey. A criminal complaint accuses her of slamming her forearm into an agent and “forcibly grabbing him.”
On Wednesday, Judge Jamel K. Semper of U.S. District Court set a trial date for Nov. 10. If found guilty, Ms. McIver faces years in prison.
After the hearing, Ms. McIver, who is in her first term representing the state’s 10th Congressional District, said that she believed the charges were part of an effort by the Trump administration to intimidate anyone who “gets in their way.”
“This is what they do,” she said, adding, “They will not stop me from doing my job.”
A spokeswoman for Ms. Habba at the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of New Jersey had no immediate comment.
After the trespassing charges against him were dropped, Mr. Baraka, who was held for roughly five hours after his arrest, filed a lawsuit against Ms. Habba, accusing her of malicious prosecution, defamation and false arrest.
“They’re using the court and the law as an appendage of their ideology to begin to hammer us into submission,” Mr. Baraka said on Wednesday outside the courthouse.
“But they can’t hammer the congresswoman,” said Mr. Baraka, a former schoolteacher who taught Ms. McIver in fifth grade.
Delaney Hall is in an out-of-the-way industrial corner of Newark, but has become a site of almost daily protest as Mr. Trump works to increase the number of migrants deported from the United States.
After Mr. Baraka’s arrest, like-minded politicians, including Zohran Mamdani, a New York lawmaker who appears poised to become the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, showed up in Newark to support Mr. Baraka. The next day, two of Mr. Baraka’s opponents for governor appeared at the facility.
On Monday, Representative Mikie Sherrill, who beat Mr. Baraka by nearly 14 points to become the Democratic nominee for governor of New Jersey, also showed up at Delaney Hall to conduct an oversight visit — two weeks after four men escaped from an upper floor in the jailhouse.
The facility remains open. But in the days after the security breach, as the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, rushed to contain the fallout, many detainees were relocated to detention centers in Texas, Louisiana and Pennsylvania, according to aides for members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation.
Three of the escaped detainees have since been located and arrested.
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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