The Brooklyn Rail

The Mayor of Newark was arrested by ICE officials on Friday afternoon. Mayor Ras Baraka was with three members of Congress from New Jersey—Representatives Bonnie Watson Coleman, Rob Menendez, and LaMonica McIver—who had come to inspect the new ICE detention center in Newark in their designated role of congressional oversight. This detention center is run by private prison operator GEO Group, one of the largest private for-profit prison companies in the country. The mayor and the Congressional representatives say the center at Delaney Hall had opened as an ICE prison without permission from the city of Newark and in violation of local ordinances, and they were there to inspect the premises to determine its compliance. Delaney Hall is on private property, not federal property.

The new detention center, just a short drive from immigrant-rich New York City and from Newark Liberty International Airport, is intended to play a central role in Trump’s accelerated mass deportation plans. They also intend to use two military bases, in Niagara Falls and in rural New Jersey, as staging areas. And the Trump administration is also planning to warehouse immigrants at Fort Dix, southeast of Trenton, as part of a larger effort to militarize deportation across the country.

When Mayor Baraka arrived at the facility to join representatives Watson, Menendez, and McIver, over twenty armed police, some in masks, military fatigues, and bulletproof vests, descended on the group. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents swarmed the mayor, pushing and shoving and throwing one of the organizers to the ground as the three members of Congress tried to protect the mayor. The HSI agents finally got Baraka into handcuffs and drove him away in an unmarked vehicle.

The melee was all thoroughly recorded in numerous videos taken by journalists, police officers, and protestors. The videos show Watson Coleman, McIver, and Menendez attempting to stop HSI agents from detaining Baraka, and federal agents putting hands on Watson Coleman and McIver as they tried to shield the mayor.

Mayor Baraka is running in the Democratic primary for Governor of New Jersey. The current governor, Phil Murphy, immediately issued a statement on the arrest: “I am outraged by the unjust arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka this afternoon outside of Delaney Hall in Newark. I am calling for his immediate release by federal law enforcement.”

Delaney Hall had previously operated as a halfway house. In February, ICE gave the GEO Group Inc. a 15-year, $1 billion contract to run the for-profit private detention center in Newark. The Florida-based GEO Group announced in its earnings call with shareholders this week that they expected to generate more than $60 million a year in revenue.

Alina Habba, Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and now interim US attorney for New Jersey, claimed Baraka had “committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself from the ICE detention center.”

New Jersey Senator Cory Booker made this statement: “As mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka has a responsibility to ensure that facilities operating in the city are adhering to laws that protect the safety and wellbeing of occupants and residents. This incident is disturbing, unnecessary and indicative of tactics that are undermining the safety and security of our communities, not adding to it. Law enforcement officers should have de-escalated this situation. Mayor Baraka should be immediately released.”

Mayor Baraka was released from Homeland Security custody five hours after being arrested. Once free, he said he’d agreed not to talk about his trespassing case, but he could talk about the larger issues: “This thing happening in America is wrong. If you’re not Blackfeet or Cherokee or Lenape, then somebody in your family was undocumented at some point.” He said Black people were undocumented residents until the 14^th Amendment was ratified, and so “Our relationship to immigrants is clear.” He said we’d all learned about due process in grade school, “That no matter what anybody said that you could have a jury of your peers. That you would have your day in court. You could face your accusers. That you were innocent until proven guilty. That you couldn’t be stopped on the street and asked for your papers or your ID simply because of the way you looked. We put up a statue that said give me your tired, your hungry, your poor masses. We advertised it to the world. So the world has come here fleeing climate change, fleeing authoritarianism to find that democracy in this country.”¹

The next day, the Department of Homeland Security announced that the three members of Congress that tried to protect Mayor Baraka on Friday (including the 80-year-old congresswoman Watson Coleman) may now face assault charges. The spokesperson for HSI, Tricia McLaughlin, accused Watson Coleman and the others of “body slamming” ICE officials.

Mayor Baraka stated to reporters on Saturday morning, “Other elected officials shouldn’t fear they’re going to be arrested, or judges arrested because they’re behaving in their conscience. This is authoritarianism. There is no other way to describe what’s happening in this country right now, but authoritarianism.”²

Ras Baraka is the son of the poets and activists Amiri Baraka (who died in 2014) and Amina Baraka, and he is half-brother to art historian and curator Kellie Jones (daughter of Amiri Baraka and Hettie Jones), and radio personality and activist Dominique di Prima (daughter of Amiri Baraka and poet Diane di Prima).

The Trump administration has now arrested a sitting federal judge (County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan in Milwaukee, Wisconsin) and the sitting mayor of Newark. Both of these arrests are shows of force intended as intimidation on the way to authoritarianism. Before these actions, the administration has picked up residents on the street and sent them to detention facilities in other states and other countries, without giving them the chance to challenge their detention legally. And now Trump deportation architect Stephen Miller says they are “actively looking at” suspending the constitutional right of habeas corpus in America, which would effectively institute martial law and permit the administration to arrest and hold people without charges or trial.

Trump and Miller are losing in the courts, so they’re turning more and more to extra-judicial political pressure and depending on the continued support of the American people for these actions. Now is the time to stand up and say no.