U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba announced three charges Tuesday night.
A grand jury indicted Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) on a trio of charges, interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba said Tuesday.
The indictment continues the Trump administration’s legal attacks against opponents of its immigration policies. And it comes as the administration has sent troops into Los Angeles over immigration protests.
The indictment is a required step for prosecutors to keep pressing felony charges announced last month following a scuffle outside an immigration detention facility in Newark involving McIver, two other Democratic members of the New Jersey congressional delegation, the city’s mayor and a group of federal law enforcement agents. The three counts, which allege McIver forcibly interfered with law enforcement officials, come with a maximum sentence of 17 years in prison.
“As I have stated in the past, it is my Constitutional obligation as the Chief Federal Law Enforcement Officer for New Jersey to ensure that our federal partners are protected when executing their duties,” Habba said in a social media post. “While people are free to express their views for or against particular policies, they must not do so in a manner that endangers law enforcement and the communities those officers serve.”
In response, McIver said the legal case was “an effort by Trump’s administration to dodge accountability for the chaos ICE caused and scare me out of doing the work I was elected to do.”
“The facts of this case will prove I was simply doing my job and will expose these proceedings for what they are: a brazen attempt at political intimidation,” she said in a statement.
The indictment follows a previously announced pair of charges against McIver. It was not immediately available on Tuesday night from a website for the federal courts.
Habba’s office previously charged Mayor Ras Baraka with a misdemeanor trespassing charge that it has since dropped. A federal judge criticized Habba’s office for “worrisome” and “embarrassing” blunders in that case. Baraka is now suing Habba.
Habba’s announcement of the indictment came as polls in the New Jersey gubernatorial primary were about to close, with Baraka on the ballot as a Democratic candidate for governor.
A criminal complaint that telegraphed the indictment, filed last month in U.S. District Court in Newark, alleged McIver “slammed her forearm” into one agent and “forcibly” grabbed him after they moved to arrest Baraka. The mayor had been invited into a gated area then told to leave it. After he left the gated area, the indictment alleges McIver went outside towards the agents and attempted to thwart the arrest. McIver was also accused of using “each of her forearms to forcibly strike” another officer, according to the previous complaint, which included multiple photos from video cameras worn by officers, as well as others mounted outside the facility.
Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman and Rob Menendez were also there. Menendez said he saw an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shove McIver, a moment which was also filmed.
The new charges add a misdemeanor count that appears to cover McIver’s alleged interference with other federal officers during the May 9 incident beyond the two identified in the criminal complaint last month.
While the Justice Department under President Donald Trump has publicly vowed not to engage in plea bargains in some cases, Habba’s post Tuesday did not say her office would push for McIver’s conviction on all charges. Instead, she called the indictment “the next step in a process that my office will pursue to a just end.”
