Two House Democrats vow to continue oversight visits at ICE jails

Rep. LaMonica McIver said she will continue to fight for congressional oversight of immigration detention centers, despite facing federal charges accusing her of assaulting officers during a May visit to a migrant jail in Newark.

McIver (D-10) told the New Jersey Monitor at an event in Jersey City Monday that the case against her has been “definitely stressful.”

“When you talk about a person coming to charge you because you were there to do your job and they’re telling you you can get 17 years in prison, that’s nothing to joke with. I’m a mother, I’m a wife, I have a family,” she said. 

McIver was joined by Rep. Rob Menendez (D-08) at Hudson County Community College in Jersey City for what they billed as a dialogue series to discuss their “shared experiences and work fighting for our communities in the time of Trump.”

The two recalled an immigration raid in Newark that occurred less than 48 hours after President Donald Trump took office for his second term, along with their often confrontational visits to detention centers. 

McIver, Menendez, and Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-12) showed up at Delaney Hall, a 1,000-bed migrant detention center in Newark, on May 9 for an unannounced inspection of the facility. Their visit ended in chaos, with federal officers arresting Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and charging him with trespassing, then later charging McIver and accusing her of shoving agents as they took Baraka into custody. She pleaded not guilty, and her trial is tentatively set to begin in November (the charges against Baraka were quickly dropped).

Menendez recalled from his visit to Delaney Hall that the building was dirty, the telephones were not working, and the three members of Congress got stuck in an elevator. Baraka and other Newark officials have accused Delaney Hall’s owners, private prison firm Geo Group, of opening the facility without proper city permits and inspections.

McIver noted on Monday that after the incident at Delaney Hall made national headlines, the Department of Homeland Security attempted to stop members of Congress from making unannounced visits to immigrant detention centers by requiring them to alert the department seven days in advance. An appropriations law in effect since 2019 grants a lawmaker the ability to conduct oversight of such centers without prior approval from the department or Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“It hasn’t changed — it’s just that the administration wants it to change, so they literally put out a guidance, but you can’t just change policy because you want to,” McIver said. “That’s not how it works.”

Menendez noted that he and other members of New Jersey’s House delegation fought federal policies on immigration under the Biden administration, too. He was among the lawmakers who signed a letter sent to then-President Biden urging him to stop fighting a New Jersey law that bars companies from contracting with ICE to detain immigrants. That law suffered a setback last month when, after a lengthy court battle, the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that it cannot apply to private companies, paving the way for more federal detention centers to open.

“The writing was on the wall that if Trump were to win, you’re going to see the most expansive immigration enforcement policies and actions that we’ve ever seen, and that’s what’s happening today,” Menendez said.

The Trump administration is eyeing a massive camp for undocumented immigrants at Fort Dix.  

“I think they have an insatiable appetite for this, and it’s not about violent criminals,” Menendez said.