Equality Caucus Chair slams Trump loyalist’s ‘morally bankrupt’ DOJ arrest of Democratic congresswoman

Congressional leaders and LGBTQ+ equality advocates are speaking out forcefully after the Trump administration charged Rep. LaMonica McIver, a Black Democrat from New Jersey, with felony assault, accusing her of attacking law enforcement officers during what colleagues say was a lawful congressional oversight visit to an ICE detention facility. The arrest crosses what New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries previously called a "red line."

Keep up with the latest in LGBTQ+ news and politics. Sign up for The Advocate's email newsletter.

Alina Habba, the Republican interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey and a longtime MAGA faithful and personal attorney to President Donald Trump, announced the charges on social media Monday. If convicted, McIver faces a maximum sentence of eight years in prison. Court documents released Tuesday show McIver faces two felony counts of assaulting, resisting, and impeding federal officers: one an ICE agent, the other a Homeland Security Investigations special agent. The incident happened on May 9 outside Delaney Hall, a private immigration detention facility in Newark that had only recently reopened under Trump’s second term.

McIver, a member of the Congressional Equality Caucus, had visited the facility alongside Reps. Rob Menendez, Bonnie Watson Coleman, and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka. The group said they were conducting lawful oversight of detainee conditions, particularly as Delaney Hall, operated by a private prison contractor, has faced backlash for denying inspections and failing to obtain permits. When agents arrested Baraka, the situation escalated.

Related: Robert Garcia ‘will not be silenced’ after DOJ attorney targets him for criticizing Elon Musk on TV

Charges against Baraka were dropped Monday, but the Trump DOJ instead focused on McIver, prompting immediate condemnation from Democratic leadership.

“This is an assault on our constitutional system of checks and balances,” said California U.S. Rep. Mark Takano, chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus. “President Trump is using the vast powers of the Department of Justice to intimidate and silence. Oversight is not a crime—it is Congress’s duty.”

House Democratic Leader Jeffries and his leadership team issued a rare joint statement calling the charges “extreme,” “morally bankrupt,” and “without any legal or factual basis.”

“We are lawfully permitted to show up at any federal facility unannounced to conduct an inspection on behalf of the American people,” they wrote. “They didn’t assault anyone, but were themselves aggressively mistreated by illegally masked individuals.”

Previously, Jeffries told reporters that “It’s a red line” if the administration began political prosecutions. “They know better than to go down that road.”

McIver’s situation is an escalation of a broader pattern of weaponization inside Trump’s Department of Justice. In February, the DOJ sent a threatening letter to gay California Rep. Robert Garcia demanding that he clarify comments made on CNN criticizing Elon Musk’s leadership role within the administration. The letter claimed Garcia’s remarks—calling Musk a “dick” and warning that Democrats needed to “bring weapons to this bar fight”—could be interpreted as threats against a federal official. Garcia rejected the letter as political intimidation, calling it a chilling effort to silence dissent.

McIver has denounced the charges as a political attack. “They mischaracterize and distort my actions, and are meant to criminalize and deter legislative oversight,” she said in a statement. “I look forward to the truth being laid out clearly in court.”

Delaney Hall is the first major ICE facility to reopen under Trump’s renewed immigration crackdown. NPR reports that it closed in 2017 but was revived this year as part of a broader push to expand migrant detention. Local officials protested its reopening.