Following the arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka outside of an ICE Facility when he tried to enter and perform a State safe and health inspection — DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin announces that the members of Congress who were with him are at risk of also being arrested.
Speaking with host Victor Blackwell, Tricia McLaughlin, Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at DHS and former advisor to failed GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, kept insisting that Mayor Baraka was arrested for "storming" the facility despite video showing him being taken into custody outside the chain-link gate.
After she grimly recited that the mayor and members of Congress who were also in attendance "put law enforcement at risk, this actually put the detainees, as well, at risk," she added more arrests would be forthcoming.
"Victor, I think that we should let viewers know there will likely be more arrests coming," McLaughlin claimed. " We actually have body camera footage of some of these members of Congress assaulting our ICE enforcement officers, including body slamming a female ICE officer. So we will be showing that to viewers very shortly."
'You say a video of members of Congress body slamming ICE officials?" a skeptical Blackwell asked.
Say what now?
"That's correct sir, it's disgusting," she replied.
"Okay, and so, if you have that video, are you suggesting that members of Congress will be arrested who were there yesterday?" the CNN host pressed.
"This is an ongoing investigation and that is definitely on the table," she shot back.
"Who has the video?" Blackwell asked.
"ICE does and we will be releasing that shortly," she replied before later adding, "We're not playing."
Uh huh.
If that actually happened why wasn’t that congressperson arrested on the spot right next to Baraka?
And ain’t it funny how upset they are about an officer being “body slammed” after Trump pardoned each and every one of J6 Terrorists, including those who assaulted 140 police officers and were convicted of Seditious Conspiracy?
Outrage porn much?
This is even worse than threatening AOC with arrest for telling people what’s in the Constitution. because clearly, that’s some kind of “Crime” in Trumplandia.
That’s not the story that Mayor Baraka told CNN.
“It was really humiliating and painful,” Baraka, who said he's now facing a federal trespassing charge, told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Friday.
Speaking out just hours after his release from federal custody, Baraka, a candidate for governor of New Jersey, took to CNN to tell his side of the story – and denounce the charges. He said he was there in support of members of Congress and his capacity as mayor, not to protest, and was wrongfully “targeted.”
“After they told us to leave, we left and they began to try to arrest me,” Baraka said. “I shouldn't say us. They targeted me and came after me specifically and arrested me.” He also slammed comments from Alina Habba, acting U.S. Attorney for New Jersey and longtime Trump ally, that accused the Newark mayor of ignoring multiple warnings.
“The reality is, Alina Habba wasn't there,” he said. “She doesn't know what happened. I was there for over an hour in that space, and nobody ever told me to move."
“Not a single person,” he added. “Not an officer from ICE, not any of the security guards, nobody told me to leave that place.”
But Baraka said he has no regrets.
“I don't have any regrets at all,” Baraka told Collins. “I would do it again. I have a right to go to those facilities as the mayor of the city.”
“And it is not federal property,” he added. “It is, in fact, private property. GEO is privately owned.”
One of these things is not like the other.
And the Mclaughlin statement is really interesting because those members of Congress have stated that they were assaulted by ICE and also US Attorney Alina Habba counter-claimed “They were not touched!”
So which is it? Were they “not touched” or did these two middle-aged members of Congress “body slam” an ICE officer?
And it’s also interesting that McLaughlin just yesterday told Fox News that the mayor and others had been “Invited into the facility?” If that’s the case why was he arrested? Why was there a confrontation at all?
Why is all this happening? The obvious reasons. Power.
President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown is about more than just immigrants, legal analyst Leah Litman told MSNBC's Chris Hayes on Friday evening — it's about laying the groundwork to create a police state that can be mobilized against Trump's political opponents.
This follows the incident in New Jersey in which ICE arrested the mayor of Newark during a protest of a private detention facility.
"We have seen immigration law — I mean, there's 100 lawsuits, right, against the federal, against the Trump administration, but we have seen immigration law and immigration enforcement as the kind of tip of the spear," said Hayes. "We first had a judge arrested in Wisconsin, a state judge frogmarched out. We're now seeing federal agents arresting a mayor. It does seem like the administration thinks this is the part of the law where they can push the constitutional envelope the furthest."
"Yes," agreed Litman. "So historically, immigration is an area where the political branches have had a lot of authority. And I think it's no accident that they are trying to use this area of law to basically criminalize political opposition here, arresting representatives, arresting judges. And in other context, basically arresting people for any unfavorable speech or bad thoughts they might have."
"And we have on that Rümeysa Öztürk, who, of course, is the grad student from Tufts University, we'll have some news about that later," said Hayes. "She was released today after, again, a federal court said, whatever latitude you have, you don't have the latitude to do this. And kind of came in and said, this is this is no good. I imagine we're going to see an appeal at some sort of filing from the mayor here about whether they have even the legal authority. I don't even know under what legal authority who these agents are or under what authority they're arresting them."
"We don't know," said Litman. "They manage to discover new legal authorities all of the time. Secretary of State Marco Rubio found this old, ancient law that allowed him just to designate particular people as being adverse threats to the foreign policy of the United States, again, largely on the basis of op-eds and speech, is part of a really disturbing pattern where they basically think the First Amendment allows you to say Republican things and that it's illegal to discriminate against Republicans or to criticize them, and that seems to be their view of the First Amendment."
Yep. That’s basically it.
Additional commentary by AOC and the body cam footage.
Several of the Reps are shoved by ICE officers causing them to bump into other officers — there is no “bodyslam" of anyone at least at this angle.
