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'All so opaque' — Newark Mayor Baraka released after chaotic arrest at ICE center protest
By
Brittany Kriegstein
and
Louis C. Hochman
Published May 9, 2025
Modified May 9, 2025
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NJ PBS / NJ Spotlight News
By
Brittany Kriegstein
and
Louis C. Hochman
Published May 9, 2025
Modified May 9, 2025
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Federal Homeland Security agents arrested Newark Mayor Ras Baraka Friday afternoon in a chaotic scene outside a newly reopened federal immigration detention center he’s been protesting for the past week, accusing him of trespassing.
Videos posted to social media by Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman at around 8 p.m. — about five hours after the mayor was taken into custody — showed Baraka exiting a second facility where he'd been transported. Crowds outside chanted "Let the mayor go."
Baraka took a few minutes to speak to the crowd outside the facility, saying he “did nothing wrong” and that his arrest was “part of what Democracy is about,” the video showed.
“I don't want nobody else to get hurt or get arrested out here while we out here, so I'm going to ask us all when I leave to clear this place out completely,” he said.
Baraka is charged in federal district court with one county of trespassing. Magistrate Judge Andre M. Espinosa ordered his release Friday without bond.
In a statement, DHS claimed Friday that Watson Coleman and Rep. Rob Menendez — who were at the 1,000-bed Delaney Hall with fellow Rep. LaMoninca McIver seeking to conduct an oversight tour — “stormed the gate” at Delaney Hall. But Watson Coleman said in a statement the claim they "stormed" the center was flatly untrue.
Like Baraka, all three representatives are North Jersey Democrats.
A video of the confrontation by NJ Spotlight News shows people pushing, shoving and shouting outside the detention facility, with Baraka at one point huddled in the middle beside McIver and Watson Coleman.
“Don't touch us! Don’t touch us!” McIver, a former Newark Council president, can be heard screaming as she and Watson Coleman huddle in the center of a pushing crowd, surrounded by people who appear to be federal agents. A man is seen using his body to block one of the officers from pushing Watson Coleman, who is 80 years old.
A few seconds later, one of the agents behind the crowd appears to slide open the gate to the facility, and the officers push Baraka through. McIver follows behind, appearing first to try to push her way in after him while agents push her out. Eventually, she gets through, and officers then let Watson Coleman follow them as someone says “clear the way, member of Congress coming through.”
According to the Newark Mayor’s office, Baraka was handcuffed and brought into the Delaney Hall detention center. New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin said in a statement that as far as he knew, no local or state law enforcement was involved in the arrest.
Another video shared with Gothamist shows Baraka, McIver and Watson Coleman inside the gates to the facility, talking with the federal officers.
“Are you kidding me? This is the mayor of the largest city. You are here on private property,” Watson Coleman can be heard saying to the agents, before one cuts in.
“Ma’am, this is the last warning,” the agent says.
“Don’t interrupt a congresswoman. Show some respect,” McIver yells.
Members of Baraka’s staff had little information to share throughout the afternoon, saying they didn’t know when he’d be released from federal custody. Kabir Moss, the spokesperson for the Newark mayor’s campaign for governor, told Gothamist he only knew that the mayor was transported to the other detention facility about five miles away, on Frelinghuysen Avenue.
“We don’t have any concrete details. … It’s just all so opaque,” Moss said Friday afternoon, adding that Baraka ‘clearly targeted’ by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.
New York City mayoral candidates Zohran Mamdani and Comptroller Brad Lander also headed to the facility, to join crowds protesting against ICE and to demanding the mayor's release.
Baraka has been protesting for several days at the city, which Newark officials allege hasn’t yet been fully inspected, including for compliance with fire safety regulations. City officials say fire and code enforcement officials have been blocked from entering the facility, where operator GEO Group began holding detainees on May 1 as part of a $1.2 billion, 15-year contract with ICE.
Watson Coleman said in a statement she, Menendez and McIver had arrived at the Delaney Hall “to exercise our oversight authority as members of Congress.”
“Contrary to a press statement put out by [the Department of Homeland Security] we did not ‘storm’ the detention center. … We were exercising our legal oversight function as we have done at the Elizabeth Detention Center without incident,” Watson Coleman wrote.
The DHS statement, issued around 4 p.m. Friday, alleged that as a bus of detainees was entering the gate at Delaney Hall “a group of protestors, including two members of the U.S. House of Representatives, stormed the gate and broke into the detention facility.”
At the time, it said Menendez, Watson Coleman and multiple protesters were “holed up in a guard shack, the first security checkpoint.”
Watson Coleman, Menendez or McIver did not immediately respond to phone calls and requests for comment Friday afternoon and evening, but told reporters outside the facility they were eventually granted access to tour Delaney Hall.
Mayor Ras Baraka of Newark speaks to the press near ICE agents outside the Delaney Hall facility earlier this week.
TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images
“They knew who we were … [but] they manhandled us, and manhandled the mayor. So you can imagine the fear of individuals just going about their lives,” Watson Coleman said.
McIver said that none of the ICE officials they met during the tour offered an apology for what had happened outside.
“What all of you watched occur is just how reckless ICE is,” she said.
The DHS statement described the representatives’ presence as a “bizarre political stunt” that “puts the safety of our law enforcement agents and detainees at risk.”
“Members of Congress are not above the law and cannot illegally break into detention facilities,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in the statement. And despite the representatives describing eventually being eventually allowed inside, McLaughlin said that “had these members requested a tour, we would have facilitated a tour of the facility.”
However, the Associated Press reported that according to witnesses, the members of Congress had in fact asked for the tour. The AP described a video in which Baraka is told by someone wearing a Homeland Security Investigations jacket that he can’t join the tour because he’s not a member of Congress.
Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a Republican serving a South Jersey district, condemned Baraka and the other elected officials in a statement, calling it a “direct attack on the rule of law.” Van Drew is one of only two Republicans in New Jersey’s congressional delegation.
“People in New Jersey are paying some of the highest taxes in the country, only to see that money used to fund illegal immigration as part of the state’s sanctuary policies. We are tired of it. No one is above the law,” he wrote.
Habba, the acting U.S. attorney, wrote in a post on X Friday that Baraka had “willingly chosen to disregard the law.”
“That will not stand in this state, she wrote. “He has been taken into custody. NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW,” she wrote.
Rep. Mikie Sherrill, who was not among the members of Congress present during Baraka’s arrest, called it an “outrage.” Sherrill, who represents the nearby 11th Congressional District, is among Baraka’s competitors in a crowded Democratic primary for governor.
Platkin, the state attorney general, also condemned the arrest.
"Arresting public officials for peacefully protesting violates the most basic principles of our democracy. … People peacefully exercising their right to free speech and assembly should never be targeted for opposing the government’s policies,” Platkin wrote in his statement.
Newark filed a lawsuit against GEO Group early last month, seeking to halt the reopening of the center, which the organization also operated from 2011 until it closed in 2017. City officials maintain they’ve been denied the access they need for proper inspections. But Trump administration officials, looking to have the case dismissed, have alleged in court filings Newark was seeking “to interfere with federal immigration enforcement.” DHS said in its statement that all valid permits needed to operate the facility have been obtained.
Watson Coleman, as seen in videos outside the center after the tour, said conditions inside the ICE center for detainees “aren’t bad.”
“We don’t know that everyone who is inside belongs there, but we know that people are OK, they’re safe, it’s clean, they’re feeding them,” she added.
ICE and the Trump administration have been accused of detaining multiple people illegally, denying them constitutionally protected due process and, in at least one case, mistakenly deporting someone to El Salvador.
ICE had been planning a Newark facility in Newark for years, and solicited applications for one in the area last summer, while Joe Biden was still president.
This story and has been updated with more information.
Tagged
public safety
new jersey
Politics
immigration
Brittany Kriegstein
Brittany Kriegstein covers all breaking news around New York City, with a focus on crime and gun violence. Got a tip? Email Brittany at [email protected].
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Louis C. Hochman
After about two decades in (mostly) New Jersey-focused commercial print, digital and digital-but-radio-adjacent news, Lou stumbled into member-supported news in early 2021, as the editor and CEO of Montclair Local. There, he (hopes he) expanded enterprise, brought more sophistication to digital storytelling and moved the nonprofit newsroom closer to long-term financial sustainability. He helped lead the Local to its fourth consecutive General Excellence award from the New Jersey Press Association — the NJPA's highest honor with judges noting the paper's work to strip away layers of government opacity, to hold power to account, to make news accessible for more members of the community, to share the stories and concerns of more facets of the community and to tell compelling stories across multiple media. He's excited to continue the same ethic — news as a public service — at NYPR as the New Jersey and suburbs editor, drawing on the extraordinary talents of reporters including Karen Yi and Nancy Solomon. Lou lives in Philly (that commute!) with his partner and their two cats, about whom and about which he speaks incessantly.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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