A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security on Saturday was like, “Yo, the Trump administration might be thinking of arresting the New Jersey House Democrats who were all up in an incident at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility on Friday. They’re saying these Democrats straight up assaulted ICE officers, man.”
Tricia McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, told CNN on Saturday morning, “Just so you know, there’s probably gonna be more arrests coming.”
She went on to say, “We got body cam footage showing some of these Congress members straight up assaulting our ICE officers, even body slamming a female ICE officer.”
When asked if any other people got arrested besides Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who got hit with trespassing charges, McLaughlin was like, “This investigation is still going, so yeah, it’s a possibility.”
She also mentioned that ICE got videos showing what went down during the incident.
Later on Saturday, McLaughlin posted a video on X showing all the craziness outside the detention facility, being like, “We ain’t gonna stand for no one assaulting our ICE officers, not even members of Congress.”
All this drama happened a day after three Congress members from New Jersey – Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman, Rob Menendez, and LaMonica McIver – visited the Delaney Hall detention facility to do some oversight work, according to statements from two of the lawmakers.
Menendez said in a statement, “We got the right as Congress members to check out any DHS facility without giving them a heads up, and we’ve already done it twice this year. ICE was trying to scare us and stop us from doing our job the whole time we were there. I’ve never seen anything like it before. It’s messed up that this happened in our neighborhood.”
McIver also said that ICE showed them “contempt, disrespect, and aggression.”
She added, “From roughing up Congress members to arresting our mayor, it’s clear that the Trump administration is abusing their power.”
None of the Congress members mentioned seeing any violence against ICE officers during their visit.
Watson Coleman went on X on Saturday to shut down McLaughlin’s claims, saying, “The idea that me or my colleagues body slammed any ICE officers is just ridiculous. DHS is straight up lying because they know their officers were out of line.”
“They gotta lie ’cause they know their actions are messed up. They can threaten us all they want, but a lie is still a lie. We ain’t scared,” she added.
A DHS spokesperson pointed NBC News to the U.S. Attorney for the District of New York for a comment. The U.S. Attorney’s spokesperson, Alina Habba, didn’t hit back with a response right away.
Spokespeople for Menendez and McIver didn’t respond to requests for comments about McLaughlin’s claims.
Baraka, when he got on CNN, called the assault allegations “crazy.”
“I’m waiting for them to show a video,” he added.
Baraka noted that Watson Coleman, who’s 80, is an older lady who probably couldn’t even lift those officers.
“None of them body slammed any officer,” he said.
He also denied that he was arrested on Friday, saying, “I didn’t trespass at all. We’ll talk about it in court.”
And that’s the whole scoop on this wild situation at the ICE detention facility. Who knows what’s gonna happen next, am I right?
