US lawyers say Baraka “convicted a trespass” during the protests at the facility, claiming he was opened without proper permission.
Rights groups and Democratic officials have condemned Mayor Newark, New Jersey, for the arrest during a protest at the Immigration Detention Center.
Mayor Las Baraka joined the detention center lawmakers called Delaney Hall for demonstrations on Friday.
For weeks he was among those protesting the recently opened 1,000 bed centre. Critics see it as an important link to President Donald Trump’s massive deportation efforts.
Attendees said Baraka tried to enter the facility on Friday with members of the US Congress, but he was denied entry.
A video reviewed by the Associated Press showed federal officials on a jacket with a logo to tell Baraka he could not watch the facility because “you are not a member of Congress.”
Baraka then left the safe area and re-joined the protesters on the public side of the center’s gates. The video showed him talking to a man in a suit through the gate. The man said, “They are talking about coming back to arrest you.”
“I’m not in their property. They can’t come out on the street and arrest me,” replied Baraka.
After a while, several Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, some wearing face coverings, surrounded by mayors and others on the public side of the gate. Baraka was handcuffed back to the security gate, and the protesters cried out, “Shame!”
In a subsequent post on social media platform X, Trump’s former personal attorney and US attorney for New Jersey, Alina Haba, said Baraka “had a trespass and ignored multiple warnings.”
“He was willing to ignore the law. It would not stand in this state,” Haba wrote. “He’s in custody. No one is beyond the law.”
US president Lamonica Mciver was also at the center on Friday, and along with representatives Bonnie Watson Coleman and Robert Menendez Jr. conducted what they called “surveillance inspections.”
In a post on X, Mciver said Baraka “did nothing wrong” and that he had already left the facility at the time of his arrest.
“This is unacceptable,” McQuiber said in the video.
For some of this, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security accused lawmakers of “raiding” the facility with “strange political stunts.”
Baraka says the detention center in Newark, not far from New York City, has opened despite no proper local permits and approvals. He launched a lawsuit to suspend the business.
Geo Group, which works with Ice to run the centre, has denied his claim. In February, the federal government signed a contract with the federal government to operate the Delaney Hall facility under a 15-year contract worth $1 billion.
“Unjust arrest”
Local elected officials, along with Governor Phil Murphy, quickly condemned the actions of federal agents, writing that X was “enthusiastically at Baraka’s unfair arrest.”
Murphy called the mayor “an exemplary civil servant who has always stood up for our most vulnerable mayor,” and called for his release.
The governor noted that New Jersey had previously passed a law banning the Democratic-based state’s private immigration detention centers, but was partially discontinued in 2023 by federal court. An appeal is underway.
Baraka, who runs next month’s Democratic primary for the governor, has been an outspoken critic of the Trump administration’s immigration policy.
He threw a rebellious tone against the Trump administration in January after storming businesses in the city he led.
“Newark doesn’t stand up vaguely while people are illegally terrified,” he said at the time.