Ras Baraka, Newark Democratic Mayor, New Jersey, was arrested on Friday while joining Congress members at an immigration and customs control detention center, according to the United States interim prosecutor for the New Jersey District Alina Haba.
Baraka “committed a transfer and ignored multiple warnings of national security investigations to withdraw from the ice arrest center in Newark, New Jersey this afternoon … has been arrested,” Habba claimed in x.
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka confronts ice agents in a demonstration outside an immigrant detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey, on May 7, 2025.
Timothy A. Clary/AFP through Getty Images
Federal charges have not yet been presented.
A spokesman for the 2025 governor campaign in Baraka confirmed in a statement, separately, that Baraka “was arrested and detained by ICE …
“We are actively monitoring and we will provide more details as they are available,” said the spokesman.
Baraka and three members of the Delegation of the Congress for New Jersey – Representators Bonnie Watson Coleman, Lammonica Mciver and Rob Menéndez, Jr. – had gone to the Immigration Detention Center of Delaney Hall to perform supervision, according to Watson Coleman and McIver.
Elected officials have been protesting outside the installation in recent days.
The mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, joins protesters outside Delaney Hall, a recently reopened immigration detention center, in Newark, NJ, May 7, 2025.
Seth Wenig/Ap
“We have heard stories of how it is in other ice prisons. We are exercising our supervision authority to see for ourselves,” Watson Coleman wrote in a publication on Friday.
Mciver wrote: “As members of Congress, we have the power to carry out supervision. That is what we are here to do.”
Haba, alleged in a telephone interview in Fox News on Friday afternoon, Baraka was inside the installation, warned several times that he would be arrested and refused to leave. He was then put under arrest when he left the installation, he said to Fox News.
The presidential counselor of the White House, Alina Haba, delivers comments before swearing as an interim prosecutor of the United States for New Jersey at the Oval Office of the White House, on March 28, 2025.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
“When you violate the law, there is no great to help you. Period, the end,” he told the network.
Newark’s city had claimed that the Delaney Hall Detention Center opened without the appropriate security protocols.
The National Security Department said in a press release on Friday that the installation, which is a private installation with which ICE hires to keep migrants, has adequate permits and said that undocumented immigrants who have committed violent crimes are being carried out there.
The governor of New Jersey, Phil Murphy, in a statement on Friday afternoon, criticized Baraka’s arrest.
“Mayor Baraka is an exemplary public servant that has always defended our most vulnerable neighbors. I am asking for their immediate liberation from the Federal Police,” he wrote.
The secretary secretary of the Department of National Security, Tricia McLaughlin, alleged without details that the chosen ones tried to “assault” the installation.
“Congress members breaking into a detention center go beyond a strange political trick and puts at risk the safety of our law and detainee agents,” McLaughlin said in a statement.
This is a development story. Consult the updates again.
