Newark Mayor Ras Baraka filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against interim U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Alina Habba, alleging that his May arrest at an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement detention center in the city he governs was an act of political retribution.
“This is not about revenge or not about me going after individuals because I think they’ve wronged me specifically,” Baraka said at a news conference after filing his lawsuit, which accuses Habba of false arrest and malicious prosecution. “Ultimately I think this about them taking accountability for what has happened to me, what went on in the newspapers and the press, people saying that I went down there and got arrested on purpose, all these kind of things, I think this kind of defamation is out of line and I think they should respond.”
Habba—who served as Donald Trump’s personal attorney before she got appointed to be New Jersey’s top federal law enforcement officer—said Baraka was arrested on May 9 at an ICE detention facility because Baraka “committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself from the ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey.”
“He has willingly chosen to disregard the law. That will not stand in this state. He has been taken into custody. NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW,” Habba wrote in a post on X at the time.
Supporters of Mayor Ras Baraka rally outside the courthouse before Baraka's court appearance in Newark, New Jersey on May 15.
However, Habba eventually dropped the charges against Baraka, saying she was doing so “for the sake of moving forward”—when in actuality it was because there was likely no evidence to secure a conviction against him. In that same announcement, she announced that she was instead going after Rep. LaMonica McIver, one of three House Democrats who were at the ICE facility that same day seeking to conduct oversight of the detention center, accusing her of having “assaulted, impeded, and interfered with law enforcement.” McIver is fighting those charges.
In his lawsuit, Baraka accused Habba of "acting for political reasons" when she ordered his arrest at the ICE detention center. He added in the lawsuit that Habba was "fulfilling her stated goal of 'turning New Jersey red' by instigating and/or authorizing the false arrest of Mayor Baraka, a Democrat."
He also accused Habba and the Trump administration of making “false and defamatory” statements about the events surrounding his arrest, including a lie that Baraka and “a mob of protesters stormed” the facility and that he was illegally entering the detention center even though he was invited there by the owner of the holding center.
“Today I filed a federal lawsuit against Alina Habba and DHS Agent Ricky Patel for false arrest, malicious prosecution, and defamation. They abused their power to violently arrest me at Delaney Hall despite being invited inside. No one is above the law,” Baraka said in a post on X.
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Baraka, for his part, has been speaking up against the Trump administration's immigration crackdown—which has impacted the city he leads. In January, Baraka said Newark residents were "being unlawfully terrorized" by the Trump administration’s immigration raids, which he said violated residents’ Fourth Amendment rights against unlawful searches and seizures.
He is currently running in a competitive Democratic primary for New Jersey's open gubernatorial election being held this November. He filed his lawsuit the same day early voting began for the primary, in which he's facing several well-known Democrats including Reps. Mikie Sherrill and Josh Gottheimer, Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, and former New Jersey state Sen. Stephen Sweeney. A recent poll shows Sherrill in the lead, with Baraka tied with Fulop for second.
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