‘We will arrest you’: DHS warns members of Congress after scuffle at ICE detention center in New Jersey

The Department of Homeland Security is considering arresting members of Congress who were involved in a scuffle between New Jersey officials and guards outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center on Friday.

The threatened arrests would mark a dramatic escalation of an already controversial incident that saw the arrest of Newark mayor Ras Baraka.

“Whether you are a civilian, a mayor, or a member of Congress, if you are storming an an ICE detention facility and putting law enforcement and detainees at risk, you can bet that we will arrest you and you will face the law,” DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin told CNN on Saturday. “You will face justice.”

Federal authorities allege Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman, Rob Menendez, and LaMonica McIver, all New Jersey Democrats, “stormed the gate and broke into the detention facility” during an oversight visit at the Newark-area Delaney Hall Detention Center on Friday, an allegation the legislators have all denied.

“Threatening to arrest Members of Congress for exercising their lawful oversight authority is another example of this administration abusing its power to try to intimidate anyone who stands up to them,” a spokesperson for Watson Coleman told Axios.

DHS says body camera footage of the scuffle, which took place in a parking lot area outside the detention center, shows McIver elbowing past a DHS agent, while McLaughlin has alleged one of the lawmakers “body slammed” an ICE officer.

“We were just simply there to do our jobs,” McIver told CNN in a separate interview. “We are congressional members. Our job is oversight. We were there to do that. That’s simply it. We did not come there to try to break people. We did not come there to cause chaos or cause any trouble.”

“We’re honestly surprised they released this footage given that it so wholly contradicts their claims,” Watson Coleman’s spokesperson added to Axios. “Nobody was ‘body slammed,’ nobody ‘assaulted’ any agents, and this footage confirms that.”

Baraka was initially allowed into a fenced parking lot area outside the detention facility before officers told him to leave and threatened him with arrest.

A chaotic scene later ensued as ICE agents, members of Congress, staff members, and gathered protesters pushed and shoved and shouted at each other.

Video of the incident from NJ Spotlight News appears to show McIver attempt to make her way through the scrum as Baraka is pulled from outside the facility into a fenced area.

A voice can eventually be heard saying, “Clear the way, member of Congress coming in.”

The lawmakers have insisted that DHS is making false claims about what happened.

“Since DHS has been lying about this, allow me to correct the record,” Rep Watson Coleman wrote in a statement on X on Friday. “This scuffle, during which an ICE agent physically shoved me, occurred AFTER we had entered the Delaney Hall premises. We entered the facility, came BACK OUT to speak to the Mayor, and then ICE agents began shoving us.”

“After Mayor Baraka was arrested yesterday, DHS officials let us conduct our tour as is required by law,” Rep. Menendez said in a statement on X on Saturday. “So despite the Admin’s attempts to spin this, they know we had every right to be there and enter the facility. If you ignore the spin, you’ll see there is only one accurate narrative – ours”

The Independent has contacted McIver and Menendez’s offices for further comment on the arrest threat.

Baraka, who has been charged in federal court with trespassing and released without bond, said after the incident he “did nothing wrong” and that his arrest was “part of what democracy is about.”

Last month, federal agents arrested Hannah Dugan, a Wisconsin judge accused of attempting to prevent federal agents from arresting an undocumented man outside her courtroom.

A group of more than 150 retired state and federal judges signed a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi condemning the arrest, calling it “another attempt to intimidate and threaten the judiciary after a series of rulings by judges appointed by presidents of both parties holding the Trump Administration accountable for its countless violations of the Constitution and laws of the United States.”