Federal judge denies Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver’s bid to drop prosecution
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday denied Democratic Re…
#NewsBeep #News #Headlines #AlinaHabba #constitutionallaw #DelaneyHall #DomesticNews #DonaldPayneJr. #DonaldTrump #Generalnews #Immigration #Indictments #JamelSemper #Legalproceedings #NewJersey #Newark #Politics #Prisons #Protestsanddemonstrations #RasBaraka #U.S.news #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesgovernment #Us #USA
https://www.newsbeep.com/248058/
New Jersey Lawmakers Condemn “Inhumane” Conditions for Visitors to ICE Jail
In September, visitors were forced to wait outside during thunderstorms, that included torrential rain and lightning.Judge says Alina Habba has been unlawfully serving as US attorney in New Jersey
A federal judge ruled Thursday that President Donald Trump’s fo…
#NewsBeep #News #Headlines #AlinaHabba #AndyKim #BarackObama #CoryBooker #Courts #DonaldTrump #Generalnews #GeraldKrovatin #Governmentandpolitics #Legislation #MatthewBrann #NewJersey #PamBondi #Politics #RasBaraka #U.S.DepartmentofJustice #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesgovernment #UnitedStatesSenate #Us #USA #Washingtonnews
https://www.newsbeep.com/75432/
Trump clears way to keep Habba as New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor
TRENTON, N.J. (…
#NewsBeep #News #Headlines #AlinaHabba #AndreEspinosa #AndyKim #APTopNews #CoryBooker #DonaldTrump #Fraud #Generalnews #Indictments #Lawenforcement #Legalproceedings #MattPlatkin #NewJersey #Newark #NJStateWire #PamBondi #PhilMurphy #Politics #RasBaraka #Trenton #U.S.DepartmentofJustice #U.S.news #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesgovernment #UnitedStatesSenate #Us #USA #Washingtonnews
https://www.newsbeep.com/19985/
Lazy Caturday Reads: Trump’s Immigration Policy and ICE as Secret Police
By Shawn Braley
Good Afternoon!!
As usual, there’s quite a bit happening the news today, but I’m going to focus on immigration. Trump’s war on Los Angeles is still going on, even though there hasn’t been much reporting about it lately. LA is apparently a test case for what the Trump wants to do in other blue states. Public outrage is building over the violent and un-American behavior of ICE agents, but will it be enough to save our democracy?
The Latest from battleground Los Angeles
Los Angeles Times: ‘A good day’: Detained U.S. citizen said agents bragged after arresting dozens at Home Depot.
A 37-year-old U.S. citizen who was tackled to the ground and arrested after filming federal agents at Home Depot on Thursday said he was held for more than an hour near Dodger Stadium, where agents boasted about how many immigrants they arrested.
“How many bodies did you guys grab today?” he said one agent asked.
“Oh, we grabbed 31,“ the other replied.
“That was a good day today,” the first agent responded.
The two high-fived, as he sat on the asphalt under the sun, Job Garcia said.
Garcia was released on Friday from a downtown federal detention center. No apparent criminal charges have yet to be filed. He is one of several U.S citizens arrested during enforcement operations in recent days. Department of Homeland Security officials say some have illegally interfered with agents’ jobs….
Garcia said he was shaken by what he heard while he was detained.
“They call them ‘bodies,’ they reduce them to bodies,” he said. “My blood was boiling.”
Here’s what happened:
Garcia, a photographer and doctoral student Claremont Graduate University, had been picking up a delivery at Home Depot when someone approached the customer desk and said something was unfolding outside.
“La migra, La migra,” he heard as he walked out. He quickly grabbed his phone and followed agents around the parking lot, telling them they were “f— useless” until he came to a group of them forming a half-circle around a box truck.
A Border Patrol agent radioed someone and then slammed his baton against the passenger window, his video shows. Glass shattered. He unlocked the door as people shouted.
In the video, a stunned man can be seen texting behind the wheel. He had apparently refused to open his door.
It’s unclear from the footage what happened next, but Garcia said an agent lunged toward him and pushed him.
“My first reaction was to like push his hand off,” he recalled. Then, he said, the agent grabbed his left arm, twisted it behind his back and threw his phone.
The agent brought him to the ground and three other agents jumped in, Garcia said
“Get the f— down sir” and “give me your f— hand. You want it, you got it, sir, you f— got it. You want to go to jail, fine. You got it,” an agent can be heard saying in the video.
“You wanted it, you got it,” the man yelled.
An agent handcuffed him so hard “that there was no circulation running to my fingers,” Garcia said.
Pinned down, Garcia had difficulty breathing.
“That moment, I thought I could probably die here,” he said.
There’s more at the LA Times link.
Yesterday, JD Vance traveled to Los Angles to stir up more trouble.
The New York Times: Vance Blames L.A. Violence on California Democrats and Disparages Padilla.
Eight days ago, Senator Alex Padilla was forcibly removed from a news conference and handcuffed by federal agents after he interrupted Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, at the Wilshire Federal Building in Los Angeles.
In the Kitchen, by Natalya Bagaskaya
At the same building on Friday, Vice President JD Vance disparaged Mr. Padilla for engaging in “political theater” and called him by the wrong name.
“Well, I was hoping Jose Padilla would be here to ask a question, but unfortunately, I guess he decided not to show up because there wasn’t the theater,” Mr. Vance said during a news conference in response to a reporter. “I think everybody realizes that’s what this is. It’s pure political theater.”
Mr. Vance’s spokeswoman later said that he misspoke when he said the senator’s name.
The vice president spent much of his news conference blaming Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles for the violence caused by some protesters in the city and the obstruction of immigration enforcement. Mr. Vance, who shook the hands of about 20 Marines who were at the federal building, alternated between attacks on California Democrats and praise for law enforcement.
“Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass, they decided to go to war against the people trying to keep our community safe,” Mr. Vance said. “That’s a disgrace. That’s a terrible commentary on their qualities as leaders.”
The Hill: Vance reference to Alex Padilla as ‘Jose’ during LA presser sparks Dem backlash.
Several California Democrats slammed Vice President Vance after he referred to Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) as “Jose” during a Friday presser in Los Angeles.
“I was hoping Jose Padilla would be here to ask a question,” Vance said, referring to Padilla’s forcible removal from a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) press conference last week.
“I guess he decided not to show up because there wasn’t a theater,” he continued.
Democrats railed against Vance for misnaming the state’s first Latino senator, who the vice president served alongside before his successful White House bid.
“Calling him ‘Jose Padilla’ is not an accident,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said in a Friday post on the social media platform X.
NBC Los Angeles: ‘How dare you.’ Mayor Bass blasts VP Vance for his comments during LA visit.
Mayor Karen Bass took aim at JD Vance Friday for the comments he made during his visit to Los Angeles, accusing the vice president of “spewing lies” and disrespecting Sen. Alex Padilla….
“The vice president of the United States spent three or four hours in LA before holding a press conference and spewing lies and utter nonsense in an attempt to provoke division and conflict in our city,” said Bass. “This is consistent with the provocation from Washington that began two weeks ago, when our city was calm and many and millions of Angelenos were going about working and contributing to our city.”
The mayor also criticized Vance for referring to Sen. Alex Padilla as “Jose Padilla,” someone he served with before serving as vice president….
The mayor emphasized that the protests, which Vance criticized harshly, were mostly peaceful, and that the city has streets have been quiet since they lifted the curfew.
“Even when there was vandalism at its height, you were talking about a couple of hundred people who were not necessarily associated with any of the peaceful protests,” said Bass. “Los Angeles is a city that is 500 square miles and any disruption took place took place in about two square miles in our city. The most – over 100 people were arrested. We are a city of 3.8 million people.”
The Trump administration’s immigration policies
We all know who’s really in charge, don’t we? The Wall Street Journal: Stephen Miller’s Fingerprints Are on Everything in Trump’s Second Term.
Stephen Miller wanted to keep the planes in the air—and that is where they stayed.
When a federal judge in March told the Trump administration to turn around flights of deported migrants headed to El Salvador, senior officials hastily convened a Saturday evening conference call to figure out what to do.
JIf they didn’t return the passengers, they would be defying a court order, some administration officials worried. Miller, who is President Trump’s deputy chief of staff, pushed for the planes to keep flying, which they ultimately did. The judge would later say that allowing officials to defy court judgments would make a “solemn mockery” of the Constitution.
Uninvited by Lucia Heffernan
The 39-year-old immigration hawk, who has been by Trump’s side since the 2016 campaign, has emerged as a singular figure in the second Trump administration, wielding more power than almost any other White House staffer in recent memory—and eager to circumvent legal limitations on his agenda.
He has his own staff of about 30 and a Secret Service detail, which White House officials said was because he had received death threats and serves as homeland security adviser. He has been responsible for the administration’s broadsides against universities, law firms and even museums. He has written or edited every executive order that Trump has signed…..
Some of Miller’s colleagues said they were alarmed by some of the legal maneuvers that Miller has proposed for executing the administration’s anti-immigrant agenda, and Trump has gently ribbed him for being too “happy” about deportations.
A bit more:
Miller, who isn’t a lawyer, is the official who first suggested using the wartime Alien Enemies Act to deport migrants, which the Justice Department pursued. He also privately, then publicly, floated suspending habeas corpus, or the right for prisoners to challenge their detention in court, which the administration hasn’t tried. That prompted pushback from other senior White House and Justice Department officials.
His orders to increase arrests regardless of migrants’ criminal histories set off days of protests in Los Angeles. Miller coordinated the federal government’s response, giving orders to agencies including the Pentagon, when Trump sent in the Marines and the National Guard, according to officials familiar with the matter….
Several White House staffers said Miller always takes the most “extreme” view of any issue, and his positions have cost the administration in court. In Trump’s first 100 days back in office, courts issued nationwide injunctions in 25 cases against the federal government, compared with six in his entire first term and four during the Biden administration, according to a report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. Several cases have already reached the Supreme Court, which has ruled against Trump on some immigration cases.
Austin Kocher at Substack: 56,397 People Now Detained by ICE, Possibly Highest in History.
According to the latest data published by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Friday, the number of immigrants held in detention on June 15 reached 56,397.1 This might be the largest detained population on record. It is certainly the largest detained population since ICE began reporting detention data during the first Trump administration. The previous high was 55,654 in August 2019—and I have used that number as the benchmark high in the past to put ICE’s detention numbers in context….
The biggest growth in recent weeks has been the number of people in civil detention with nothing more than civil immigration violations on their record. The chart and table below focus only on people in detention as a result of ICE arrests. This number increased from 7,781 to 11,763. The increases for people with pending criminal charges or criminal convictions increased much less.
In fact, nearly a third of all people held in ICE detention now have no criminal history, up from 6 percent in January. The percent of immigrants held with criminal convictions has actually decreased from 62 percent to 37 percent. See the previous post in January for my prediction that this would take place and a detailed description explaining why….
To put the growth of detained people with no criminal histories in context, we can compare the current totals with the totals at the start of the Trump administration to visualize their relative growth over the past six months. There has been nearly a 14x growth in the number of people detained at any one time without criminal histories.
The majority of ICE detainees were arrested by ICE, rather than CBP—an indication that most of the immigration enforcement happening in the country right now is happening throughout the interior while the border is less active as a site of enforcement. That said, I encourage you to listen to my conversation with Reece Jones about the expansive enforcement geography of Border Patrol. They are not only operating at the border, but also in places across the country.
Go to the link to see charts and graphs.
Commentary on the authoritarian behavior of ICE
Heather Cox Richardson at Letter from an American: June 20, 2025.
Individuals in plain clothes with their faces covered and without badges or name tags are snatching people off the streets and taking them away. Todd Lyons, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is housed within the Department of Homeland Security, claimed that such measures for anonymity are imperative because “ICE officers have seen a staggering 413 percent increase in assaults against them.” [….]
The Department of Homeland Security appears to be trying to convince Americans that their agents must cover their faces because their opponents, especially Democrats, are dangerous.
Bella et Miso, by L. Roche
On Tuesday, masked, plainclothes ICE agents assaulted and arrested New York City comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander, the city’s chief financial officer. Lander was accompanying an immigrant to a scheduled court hearing to try to protect him from arrest in one of ICE’s sweeps of those showing up for their court hearings. Lander asked the agents to produce an arrest warrant for the man they were arresting, and was himself arrested.
Homeland Security said it would charge him with impeding a federal officer and “assaulting law enforcement.” As Bump notes, a video of the incident shows that Lander “assaulted the officers in the sense that a bully might accuse you of having gotten in the way of his fist.” Lander was later released, and New York governor Kathy Hochul said the charges against him had been dropped.
The same pattern occurred last month, when federal prosecutors charged Newark, New Jersey, mayor Ras Baraka with trespassing and interim U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, Alina Habba, broke the Department of Justice rule that it would not comment on ongoing investigations by posting that Baraka had “committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself from the ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey this afternoon. 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.”
Ten days later, Habba quietly dropped the case and announced another one, this time against U.S. Representative LaMonica McIver (D-NJ), charging her with “assaulting, impeding and interfering with law enforcement” during Baraka’s arrest….
…the point of these arrests is almost certainly not an attempt to see justice done. They continue the longstanding Republican policy of seeding the media with a false narrative of bad behavior by their opponents—voter fraud, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails, and so on—in order to convince voters that their opponents are dangerous to America.
Read the whole thing at the link.
Garrett Graff at Doomsday Scenario: ICE believes it will never face accountability again. The Trump administration is letting an unaccountable secret police form at the heart of our democracy.
Day by passing day, we are watching what amounts to a national police riot by ICE.
Social media is filled with disturbing videos of masked ICE officers — or, I should say, people suspected of being or self-identifying as ICE officers, since for the most part they’re not wearing any identifiable police insignia — manhandling people, including the comptroller of New York, US citizens, suspected aliens, and even journalists alike. In recent days, ICE has also begun resisting congressional oversight efforts — oversight that clearly and legally it needs to provide. In fact, yesterday ICE announced a new “policy” that says it doesn’t have to provide congress access to its facilities that Congress itself wrote into law. (It goes without saying that you can’t create a “policy” that negates an actual bona fide law—and it’s worth explaining that the reason Congress created this very explicit law allowing ICE oversight is because of its past struggles in doing that exact thing! It’s not like there’s much ambiguity or “open to interpretation” here.)
ICE in just a few weeks has transformed itself into the closest thing that the US has ever had to a “secret police,” with more seemingly culturally in common with the Klan nightriders of Reconstruction than their federal agency brethren like the FBI or ATF.
Graff’s point of view:
What really worries me about ICE’s collective actions nationwide, though, is bigger than any single raid or social media post — what worries me is that what we’re witnessing nationwide are not the actions of an agency that believes it will ever be subject to meaningful oversight or legal authority ever again.
Cat, by Rahanin Ratanapahol
This is not an agency that is treating members of Congress as if it will ever be held to account by the men and women who control its budget.
This is not an agency that believes that any of its actions on the streets will be subject to meaningful review by judicial authorities — or that any of its actions will be litigated in the courts.
This is not an agency that believes that any of its actions will be subject to meaningful review by the DHS inspector general, either for policy violations or criminal use-of-force abuses, nor reviewed by US attorneys or federal prosecutors at any level.
This is not an agency leadership that believes that anyone in government — at the Justice Department, the White House, or DHS — currently cares about public perception, misconduct, or violations of civil rights and civil liberties.
And this is not an agency that believes that Democrats will ever be back in charge.
That’s what should terrify us.
It does terrify me. Please go read the rest at Doomsday Scenario.
On Trump’s progress toward authoritarianism
Greg Sargent at The New Republic: Trump’s Threat to Unleash Troops in Cities Just Got Darker and Scarier.
On Thursday, President Donald Trump scored a temporary victory after an appeals court ruled that he can continue deploying the National Guard as part of his watch-me-play-fascist-on-TV response to anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles. The decision accepted Trump’s premise that conditions in L.A. permit him to take control of the guard—but it rejected his claim that such decisions should be entirely unreviewable by courts.
That latter part of the ruling is important. It’s potentially something of an obstacle to his ongoing effort to assume quasi-dictatorial powers for himself—for now, anyway.
Trump apparently processed only the first part. He posted the following, in a reference to California Governor Gavin Newsom, who’s suing to block Trump from taking over his state’s guard (emphasis added):
The Judges obviously realized that Gavin Newscum is incompetent and ill prepared, but this is much bigger than Gavin, because all over the United States, if our Cities, and our people, need protection, we are the ones to give it to them should State and Local Police be unable, for whatever reason, to get the job done.
In short, Trump seized on this mixed ruling to threaten to send in the National Guard anywhere in the United States if and when he decrees it “necessary.” The scare quotes are mine, because on many fronts, Trump is testing how far he can get by inventing ways to claim such actions are “necessary,” a power he and his advisers see as boundless.
All of which highlights a deeper conundrum here: What can the courts—and the rest of us—do in the face of a president whose bad faith and willingness to concoct pretexts for abusing his powers basically have no bottom?
Head over to TNR to read the rest.
Xochitl Gonzalez at The Atlantic (gift link): Brad Lander’s Stand. Defending liberty is a messy business.
As ICE agents dragged Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller and a candidate for mayor, down the hallway of a federal courthouse this week, he repeatedly—and politely—asked to see their judicial warrant. Lander had locked arms with an undocumented man he identified as Edgardo, and refused to let go. Eventually, the ICE agents yanked Lander away from the man, shoved him against a wall, and handcuffed him. Lander told them that they didn’t have the authority to arrest U.S. citizens. They arrested him anyway.
The courthouse is only a few blocks away from the one where Donald Trump was convicted last year of 34 felony crimes for falsifying business records. His supporters painted the criminal-justice process as a politically motivated witch hunt. But none of them seems to mind now that masked ICE agents are lurking behind corners in the halls of justice to snatch up undocumented migrants who show up for their hearings. This was not the first time Lander had accompanied someone to the courthouse, and it wouldn’t be his last.
Sharyn bursic, Lady on Couch with Cat
The Department of Homeland Security claimed that Lander had been “arrested for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer.” The whole thing is on video, so anyone can see that there was no assault. Lander is about as mild-mannered a politician as they come. Matt Welch, a libertarian blogger and no fan of Lander, wrote on X that the only things Lander had ever assaulted were “Coney Island hot dogs and school-zone speed limits.” He’s the kind of old-fashioned elected official who doesn’t much exist anymore, the kind you see at public-library events or can call when your kid’s day care is shut down and know he’ll actually do something about it. A different kind of politician would have milked the attention for all it was worth. But if Brad Lander were a different kind of politician, he might be first and not third in the polls. “I did not come today expecting to be arrested,” he told reporters after being released. “But I really think I failed today, because my goal was really to get Edgardo out of the building.”
More link him, please.
People who are used to living in a democracy tend to find it unsettling when elected officials are arrested, or thrown to the ground and handcuffed for asking questions at press conferences. They don’t like to see elected officials indicted for trying to intervene in the arrest of other elected officials. And they find it traumatizing when, as has been happening in Los Angeles and elsewhere, they see law-abiding neighbors and co-workers they’ve known for years grabbed and deported.
The question now is what Americans are going to do about it.
Los Angeles has offered one model of response. Although Trump campaigned on finding and deporting undocumented criminals, in order to hit aggressive quotas, ICE has changed its tactics and started barging into workplaces. Citizens have reported being detained simply because they look Hispanic. Residents of one Latino neighborhood recorded ICE officers driving in an armored vehicle. Many residents felt that the raids were an invasion by the president’s personal storm troopers, and marched into the streets in response.
The first groups of protesters were organized by unions, but soon, other Angelenos—of many ages and backgrounds—joined them. Most of the protesters were peaceful, chanting and marching and performing mariachi around federal buildings in downtown L.A. But others were not. They defaced buildings with graffiti and summoned Waymos, the driverless taxis, in order to set them on fire.
Of course right-wingers reacted predictably, blaming Democrats. But what explains the reactions from some Democrats and journalists?
I would have thought that the reaction to the protests from anyone outside the MAGAverse would have been pretty uniform. Democrats have been warning Americans for years about Trump’s descent into authoritarianism. Now it is happening—the deportations, the arrests, the president’s face on banners across government buildings, the tank parade. “Democracy is under assault right before our eyes,” Newsom said. And yet, so many Democratic leaders, public intellectuals, and members of the media seemed distinctly uneasy about the protests. Yes, they seem to say, ICE has been acting illegally, but what about the Waymos?
In The Washington Post, David Ignatius fretted about protesters waving Mexican flags and wondered if the “activists” were actually working for Trump. Democratic leaders were “worried the confrontation elevates a losing issue for the party,” The New York Times reported. Politico raised a more cynical question: “Which Party Should Be More Worried About the Politics of the LA Protests?”
Many Democrats denounced vandalism while supporting the right to protest. But the Democratic Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was harsh in his criticism of the protesters, lamenting that the random acts of violence and property damage by a few bad actors would cause Democrats to lose the “moral high ground.”
There is a time for politicians to fine-tune a message for maximum appeal. But this is a case of actual public outrage against the trampling of inalienable rights. This is not a fight for the moral high ground; this is a fight against authoritarianism.
Use the gift link to read the entire article.
That’s all I have for you today. What’s on your mind?
#authoritarianism #BradLander #Democrats #DepartmentOfHomelandSecurity #JDVance #LosAngles #RasBaraka #SenAlexPadilla
https://www.fogolf.com/981724/baraka-a-mile-from-trumps-golf-course-im-not-in-his-backyard-hes-in-mine/ Baraka a Mile from Trump’s Golf Course: I’m not in His Backyard, He’s in Mine #Donald #DonaldTrump #DonaldTrumpGolf #DonaldTrumpGolfing #Governor2025 #RasBaraka #Tewksbury #trump #TrumpGolf #TrumpGolfing
#Newark Mayor #RasBaraka sues interim US Attorney #AlinaHabba for "false arrest and malicious prosecution."
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.njd.571808/gov.uscourts.njd.571808.1.0.pdf
#law #Trump #RevengePolitics #dissent #WeaponizationOfGovernment #AbuseOfPower #immigration
Kevin Breuninger reveals that President Trump has appointed Alina Habba as the interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey amidst legal turmoil. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka has filed a defamation lawsuit against her following his arrest related to an immigration incident. Despite dropping Baraka's case, Habba pursues another Democratic official. Explore this intricate legal battle and its implications. Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/03/trump-habba-baraka-lawsuit-ice.html
#DonaldTrump #AlinaHabba #RasBaraka #lawsuit #NewJersey
A Federal Judge SCOLDED Trump's chief #bootlicker and interim #USAttorney for #٪NJ #AlinaHabba to her face for the phony political theater around her decision to first indict and then dismiss the trespass chargers against Mayor of #Newark #RasBaraka - @mspopok.bsky.social
youtu.be/I1y9-ISCSX4?...
FED UP Judge STICKS the DAGGER...
Alina Habba was PUBLICLY SHAMED by a federal judge for her “hasty” arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9Dx9QDg9nQ
#AlinaHabba #Newark #RasBaraka #RuleOfLaw #Trumpadmin #ICE #Djibouti #SouthSudan #DHS #deportations #JudgeMurphy
The larger American establishment's ongoing surrender to Trump and his fascist regime is a story with many high-profile cowards, culprits, and collaborators. But given the frequently self-declared role of American media to speak truth to power, and protect our "democracy," I think it's entirely fair that corporate news outlets paving the way for Downmarket Mussolini to install a fascist dictatorship come in for extra vigorous criticism by honest observers who understand what they're doing. Take for example this recent piece for the Intercept by Natasha Leonard, examining how corporate media outlets reported the Department of Justice's outrageous plans to prosecute Democratic Congresswoman LaMonica McIver on wholly fabricated assault charges, after she attempted to conduct legal oversight on a privately-run ICE facility in her district.
https://theintercept.com/2025/05/20/trump-prosecuting-democrat-mciver-ice-media/
Trump Is Prosecuting a Congressional Democrat for Doing Her Job. The Media’s Response: No Big Deal.
“Democratic Rep. McIver charged with assault after skirmish at ICE center, New Jersey prosecutor says,” The Associated Press reported. “Rep. LaMonica McIver charged by DOJ over incident with ICE agents,” read the ABC News headline. “The Justice Department charged a New Jersey congresswoman with assaulting federal agents during a clash outside a Newark immigration detention center,” began the New York Times’s coverage.
All of these are technically accurate: Alina Habba, Trump’s sometime personal lawyer and the interim federal prosecutor for New Jersey, announced on X that the administration was charging the member of Congress with “assaulting, impeding and interfering with law enforcement” after an incident when McIver and two other House members went to view ICE’s privately run Delaney Hall detention facility.
News organizations should, however, have long ago stopped affording the Trump administration such credulous coverage. Even the most bare-bones, facts-only reporting here fails the basic task of truth-telling if it doesn’t lead by pointing out that these charges are manufactured, malicious, politically motivated attacks."
I've written a bit about both the (now dropped) charges against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, and the pending charges against Congresswoman McIver so I won't rehash all the details here again; needless to say I agree wholeheartedly with Leonard's assertion that the charges against McIver are trumped up fascist nonsense, a clear case of attempted political intimidation, and part of a seemingly racist pattern of targeting its political opponents with the Justice Department, by the Trump administration. Furthermore, given that the incident that motivated interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba to file assault charges that each carry a maximum sentence of eight years was captured entirely on video, I don't think it is at all reasonable to pretend the Trump regime might have a point, or that this is a "she said, they said" kind of issue. Yet as Leonard documents, that's exactly how subservient media reported not only the story of McIver's targeting, but also the attempted prosecution of Baraka as well.
Look folks, this isn't a question of partisan political coverage; I'm no friend of the Democratic Party, and based on the significant quantity of her writing I've read, I'd be willing to bet neither is Leonard. There is something fundamentally wrong, and actively dangerous, about a US corporate media complex that can watch a fascist, white nationalist, and openly nativist regime engage in a clear act of authoritarian political intimidation against its duly-elected political opposition, to protect a nightmare mass deportation scheme built on legal arguments you know are extremely dubious, and report it as a "clash" while accepting Alina Habba of all people's arguments at face value. This isn't bad journalism, this is paving the way for the fascist repression of Trump's political opponents in real time and whether its a result of cowardice, or open collaboration, is absolutely fucking irrelevant. The United States is speedrunning a descent into a fascist dictatorship run by a brainwormed septuagenarian racist and his openly white nationalist toady Stephen Miller, and these chucklefucks are out here pretending just maybe a Congresswoman should do a couple decades of hard time for bumping into an ICE murderpig while literally being prevented from doing her job; even though we have the entire interaction on fucking video.
If this is the kind of coverage corporate media outlets intend to provide during the second Trump administration, then Downmarket Mussolini doesn't need to suppress the media. After all, they're already happy to work for him and his fascist agenda right now, and Der Leader is rather busy tearing what passes for American democracy apart as we speak.
#Trump #Fascism #Propaganda #Media #Collaborators #CorporateMedia #LaMonicaMcIver #RasBaraka #AlinaHabba #DoJ #Dictatorship #ICE #DHS #MassDeportations #DelaneyHall
#AlinaHabba, a fmr personal atty to #Trump, also charged Rep #LaMonicaMcIver (D-NJ) w/assaulting 2 #ICE agents during the clash that erupted May 9 as agents arrested #RasBaraka. The congresswoman & other Dems in DC have decried her prosecution as“political #intimidation”
At Baraka’s hearing Wed, Demanovich sidestepped the judge’s demands to explain how prosecutors could have said last week they were fully prepared to take Baraka’s case to trial, only to drop the charges days later.
“The apparent rush in this case, culminating today in the embarrassing retraction of charges, suggests a failure to adequately investigate. Your office must operate with a higher standard than that,”Espinosa said.
Interim #USattorney #AlinaHabba has offered no explanation for her decision to drop the misdemeanor trespassing charge her office filed against Mayor #RasBaraka following his controversial arrest this month outside #DelaneyHall #immigration detention facility in #Newark.
Judge blasts #Trump admin’s embarrassing retraction of charges’
The #DOJ charged #Newark #Mayor #RasBaraka w/ trespassing during a visit to an #ICE facility in the city, but days later has now dropped the case.
A magistrate judge upbraided federal prosecutors Wed as he granted their request to dismiss trespassing charges against Mayor Baraka, calling the govt’s abrupt about-face “a worrisome misstep” in a case that has stoked a political firestorm.
#law #immigration
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/05/21/mciver-baraka-newark-ice-court-charges/
In a story that as far as I can tell represents a petulant fascist temper tantrum as a result of fallout over the clown-show authoritarian arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, noted sycophant Trump minion Alina Habba has announced criminal charges against US Congresswoman (D-NJ) LaMonica McIver. The regime is accusing the Congresswoman of assaulting two ICE agents during the lawful oversight visit she conducted on a sketchy, privately-run, recently reopened migrant detention facility called Delaney Hall; the very same visit that resulted in Trump's Gestapo arresting Baraka as part of the regime's attempts to intimidate opposition to their unlawful mass deportation campaign.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/lamonica-mciver-charges
'Should Send a Chill Down the Spine of Every American': Trump DOJ Charges New Jersey Democrat
"In a statement, Interim U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Alina Habba announced the charges against U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.), claiming the lawmaker "assaulted, impeded, and interfered with law enforcement" at GEO Group's Delaney Hall. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) awarded GEO Group a billion-dollar contract earlier this year to detain migrants there, even as the facility faced legal challenges and accusations of abuse.
McIver rejected the charges against her as "purely political," saying that "they mischaracterize and distort my actions" in an attempt to "criminalize and deter legislative oversight."
"We were fulfilling our lawful oversight responsibilities, as members of Congress have done many times before, and our visit should have been peaceful and short," said McIver. "Instead, ICE agents created an unnecessary and unsafe confrontation when they chose to arrest Mayor [Ras] Baraka."
Habba said Monday that her office has agreed to drop the trespassing charge against Baraka, who welcomed the decision while expressing solidarity with McIver."
Okay so I don't know if you remember the post I made about Baraka's arrest, but there are literally a bunch of links to video footage of the confrontation Habba is talking about and needless to say it doesn't show the Congresswoman assaulting anyone, let alone "body-slamming" anyone as at least one DHS official previously claimed. Even the government's own out of context video clip just shows some shoving in a crowd of people trying to protect the Mayor of Newark. In other words the Interim U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey is straight up lying about something we can all watch on video. This would of course be more shocking if the world hadn't gotten to know Habba during her time as a defense attorney for Downmarket Mussolini, in which is she routinely spat out easily disprovable lies in court. As an activist I can say from personal experience that this feels an awful lot like the standard bullshit charge cops who just roughed up some protesters press to keep the heat off long enough for the story to go away, and then quietly drop later. You can see that same pattern at work in the "trespass" charges laid against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, which were ultimately dropped because the regime knows they don't have a leg to stand on when they're under oath.
With all that established however, I think it's important to understand that even if they ultimately drop the charges against McIver, as they did with Baraka, this is still an example of a fascist regime weaponizing the enforcement arm of the state, to target and intimidate their political opposition. Pam Bondi might not love the Justice Department's chances in a court of law, but a message is still being sent to opposition party politicians that if they try to interfere with the unlawful, openly fascist "whitening" of America, security forces will be deployed to stop them. This when combined with the regime's threatening rhetoric, and its day to day attempts to erode the oversight of the judiciary to do blatantly unconstitutional authoritarian bullshit, effectively creates an unstable political environment where opposition to the regime's program, even legal opposition, carries an impossible to properly calculate degree of personal risk to the critic. Whatever your opinion of the Democratic Party happens to be, I think we can all admit that putting their own asses on the line to protect dissidents and critics hasn't exactly been their forte since at least October 7th, 2023; although obviously Baraka, McIver, and Robert Menendez deserve full marks for doing so now.
Finally; I can't prove it, but for a fun thought experiment google up some pictures of Baraka, McIver, and Menendez and tell me if you can think of any obvious reasons a white nationalist government might charge only the two people they did. Yeah, looked about white to me too.
#Fascism #Trump #PoliceState #LaMonicaMcIver #ICE #DoJ #PamBondi #AlinaHabba #DHS #RasBaraka #DelaneyHall #RobertMenendez #Intimidation #DemocraticParty #USCongress #Newark #NewJersey #USPol #MassDeportation #Racism #WhiteNationalism
Mayor #RasBaraka was initially allowed past the fence, acc/to video he released last week that he said showed him being INVITED past the gates before he was arrested, seemingly contradicting accusations that he had barged into the facility without permission. He was then asked to leave & exited voluntarily.
However, federal agents wearing face coverings & military fatigues appeared outside the gates to arrest the mayor, video shows, leading to the chaotic scene.
In Feb, #ICE entered into a $1B contract w/ #GEOGroup, one of the country’s largest #PrivatePrison companies, to convert the building into a detention center. But Mayor #RasBaraka, who is running for governor of #NJ, galvanized opposition against the detention center, arguing that it had opened w/o the proper permits or inspections.
The controversy engulfing the facility drew the attention of the NJ lawmakers, who visited the facility on May 9 to inspect conditions.
#AlinaHabba claimed she had dismissed the charge against #RasBaraka “for the sake of moving forward.” [or because it was BS. He was invited in by agents & it was caught on multiple videos]
Rep #LaMonicaMcIver & the 2 other lawmakers—Reps Bonnie Watson Coleman & Rob Menendez—have pushed back against the #Trump admin’s contention that the legislators *stormed* into the detention center. The federal govt’s narrative has also been contradicted by video footage & by witnesses at the scene.
“The charges against me are purely political—they mischaracterize & distort my actions, & are meant to #criminalize & deter #legislative #oversight,” she said.
#AlinaHabba also announced that she had dismissed a misdemeanor charge for trespass against #RasBaraka, the Democratic mayor of #Newark, whose arrest had precipitated the flare-up w/federal agents after he sought to join the lawmakers on their tour of the detention center.
#DOJ charged a #NewJersey congresswoman w/ #assault of federal agents at a #Newark #immigration detention center & dropped the BS trespass charge against Mayor #RasBaraka from the same episode.
#AlinaHabba, interim #USattorney for #NJ & fmr #Trump defense atty, posted on X that congresswoman #LaMonicaMcIver was charged “for assaulting, impeding & interfering w/law enforcement.”
#law #racism #sexism #RevengePolitics #WeaponizationOfGovernment
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/19/nyregion/new-jersey-congress-ice-charges.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=p&pvid=A8431CAB-00E6-435B-B30C-FD2475D27BB2
