Newark Mayor Ras Baraka arrested during ICE detention centre protest | Migration News

The US prosecutor says that Baraka’s protest ‘committed’ the protest of the installation, which are open arguments without clean permits.

Rights groups and Democratic officials have denounced the trial of the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, a duration of a protest in an immigration detention center.

Mayor Ras Baraka had joined several legislators at the detention center, called Delaney Hall, for a demonstration on Friday.

During the week, it has a bone among those who protest the recently opened center of 1,000 beds, which critics see as a key link in the mass deportation efforts of President Donald Trump.

Attendees said that Baraka sought to enter the facilities along with members of the United States Congress on Friday, but the entrance was denied.

A video reviewed by Associated Press showed a federal official in a jacket with the Baraka National Security Research Unit that could not travel the facilities because he is not a member of the Congress. “

Baraka then left the area safe, joining the protesters on the public side of the center door. The video showed him talking to a man in a suit. The man said: “They are talking about judging you again.”

“I’m not on their property. They can’t go out and judge me,” Baraka replied.

Moments later, several immigration and customs application agents (ICE), some with facial coatings, surrounded the mayor and others on the public side of the door. Baraka was dragged back through the handcuff door, while the protesters shouted: “What a shame!”

In a subsequent publication on the social media platform X, Alina Haba, Trump’s former personal lawyer and US Fiscal. For New Jersey, said Baraka had “committed transfer and ignored multiple warnings” to leave.

“He has voluntarily chose to ignore the law. That will not be in this state,” Haba wrote. “It has been tasks in custody. No one is above the law.”

The American Lamony representative McIver was also in the center on Friday, along with the representatives Bonnie Watson Coleman and Robert Méndez JR, to carry out what they called a “supervision inspection.”

In a publication about X, Mciver said that Baraka “did nothing wrong” and that the installation was already gone at the time of his trial.

“This is unacceptable,” Mciver said in the video.

For his part, a spokesman for the National Security Department accused the legislators of “assaulting” the installation in a “strange political trick.”

Baraka has said that the detention center, located in Newark, not far from New York City, opened despite not having adequate local permits and approvals. It has lunch a demand to stop its operations.

The Geo Group, which directs the center in coordination with ICE, has denied its statements. In February, an agreement was held with the Federal Government to administer the Delaney Hall facilities, under a 15 -year contract valued at $ 1 billion.

‘Unjust trial’

The local elected officials quickly condemned the actions of federal agents, with the state governor, Phil Murphy, writing in X that he was “outraged by the unfair trial” or Baraka.

Murphy called the mayor as an “exemplary public servant who always defended himself for most vulnerable mayors” and requested his release.

The governor said that New Jersey had previously approved a law that prohibits the private centers of immigration detention in the State, a democratic strength, although it was partially attacked by a federal court in 2023.

Baraka, who is postulated in the Democratic primaries next month for governor, has been a critic transmitted from the Trump administration immigration policies.

He hit a challenging tone against the Trump administration in January, after ICE assaulted business in the city he leads.

“Newark will not remain idle while people are being illegally terrified,” he said at that time.