This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, the mayor of the largest city in New Jersey, was arrested Friday and detained by masked federal immigration police when he went to a newly reopened, private, 1,000-bed Immigration and Customs Enforcement jail called Delaney Hall. He says he was there to support three congressmembers set to tour the facility: Bonnie Watson Coleman, LaMonica McIver and Rob Menendez. Newark Mayor Baraka says he was asked to leave the premises, and did so. He had gone to the other side of the fence, the Newark public property side, away from the congressmembers, was on a public street, when he was seized by officers in a chaotic scene.
AIDE 1: Now circle the mayor! Circle the mayor!
REP. LAMONICA McIVER: What? What the hell?
AIDE 1: Circle the mayor!
REP. LAMONICA McIVER: What the hell?
AIDE 1: Circle the mayor! Circle the mayor!
REP. LAMONICA McIVER: What the heck?
REP. BONNIE WATSON COLEMAN: Absolutely not. Absolutely not.
ICE AGENT: Back up. Back up. Do not cause us problems.
AIDE 1: Where’s my congresswoman?
AIDE 2: Congresswoman! Congresswoman! She’s right in front of you!
REP. LAMONICA McIVER: Don’t touch us! Don’t touch us!
AIDE 2: Congresswoman!
AIDE 1: Get off of us.
REP. LAMONICA McIVER: Don’t touch us!
AIDE 1: Get off of us.
AIDE 2: Get out!
AMY GOODMAN: As the ICE agents handcuffed Mayor Baraka, the three Democratic congressmembers — Menendez, McIver and Coleman — tried to wrap their arms around him to protect him. After he was arrested, a crowd of hundreds gathered, demanding he be released. He was charged with trespassing and later released and addressed supporters.
MAYOR RAS BARAKA: I didn’t know that this morning when I woke up that I’d be in this detention facility here, that I would end up incarcerated for something that I believe is my democratic right, to show up and speak out against what I think was happening there, a violation of city and state laws and a lack of transparency.
AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson accused the New Jersey congressmembers at the scene of assaulting ICE officers, warned they still may face arrest.
We’ll speak with 80-year-old Congressmember Bonnie Watson Coleman in a few minutes, but we begin with Newark mayor, gubernatorial candidate Ras Baraka.
Welcome to Democracy Now! I’m glad I’m not speaking to you behind bars, but where you are in Newark, Mayor. If you can start off by talking about why you were there, outside Delaney Hall, what this place is, and what happened?
MAYOR RAS BARAKA: Well, I actually go there every day, every morning. I would have been there this morning. I go at 7 a.m. with fire code officials, UCC officials, health inspectors, to get in, as it is our right to inspect the facility for them to apply for a certificate of occupancy. We’re in court with GEO right now, because they’re defying city ordinances.
I went back that afternoon because I was invited to participate in a conference that the congresspeople were going to have after they toured the facility themselves. I went there for that purpose. You know, we waited there over an hour, almost an hour and a half, with no incident, without any incident whatsoever. I was allowed to come inside and stand there by the gate without incident for over an hour, waiting for the congresspeople to come out.
When the special agent in charge, Patel, showed up, he escalated the situation. There, the congresspeople tried to reason with him, you know, surrounded me inside, and finally got him to agree for me to leave. I left, on the other side of the fence. They may — I guess they reversed that decision and made a decision to come around and, in fact, arrest me.
And so they did. They arrested me, and the congresspeople and other bystanders tried to shield me from being arrested. But, you know, I did. And I think it was better that that happened, because it would have probably gotten worse than it was getting while I was out there.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, we heard that — well, you went to the Newark side, and you represent Newark. You were on the public property side. Someone got a call next to you, right? One of the officials got a call. Now —
MAYOR RAS BARAKA: Right, right.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s be clear: The U.S. attorney for New Jersey there is Alina Habba, the former private lawyer for President Trump. If you can explain what you understand took place? Because that seemed to escalate things, when that agent was on the phone.
MAYOR RAS BARAKA: Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. You could see that it was resolved, that I was leaving. I left. I was on the other side. When he got the call, I was already on the other side of the fence. He, in turn, got a phone call. Right after the phone call, they proceeded to come after me. When they first came, they came right up to me anyway. And this idea that other people got arrested is not true. I was the only one arrested there, and so they targeted me specifically. So, after the phone call, it did escalate.
AMY GOODMAN: So, the interim U.S. Attorney Alina Habba said on X that you, quote, “ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove” — well, she said, “to remove himself,” unquote, from the detention center, again, which, as you point out, is run by the GEO Group. She added, quote, “No one is above the law.” Please respond, Mayor.
MAYOR RAS BARAKA: Yeah, she’s right: No is above the law. Neither are they. Neither is the GEO — the GEO Group is not above the law, the president or any of these people.
We have a dispute with GEO because they’re violating city laws, and we are fighting with them in court. And ICE is interfering and interceding in that, unfortunately, without the judge’s — you know, whatever the judge says, they are doing the opposite of that.
You know, I sat on that — sat inside of that fence there for over an hour, and nobody told me to move. Nobody told me to get out. Nobody questioned me. Nobody came up to me and said anything to me. I sat there for a very long time before that agent showed up there. And so, it was clearly their intention to escalate it and to focus everything on me and to target me, and that’s exactly what happened.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, I wanted to clarify something, Mayor Baraka. A lot of the news reported that you were arrested during a protest.
MAYOR RAS BARAKA: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: But, in fact, you weren’t protesting. Can you explain the history of this GEO facility, which wasn’t always owned by GEO, and why you say they don’t have the proper documentation to hold a thousand prisoners?
MAYOR RAS BARAKA: Right, yeah, I was not protesting, actually. And I could be protesting. I speak to the protesters when I get there. But at the end of the day, the GEO Group — the facility used to be a drug rehab center and a halfway house for people that were incarcerated that were coming home, and this was a transition for them to — from there, to come home, so short, very short periods of time that they spent there to transition home.
They converted it, or are in the process of trying to convert it, into this kind of detention facility, over a thousand beds in a detention facility. They had a certificate of occupancy 20 years ago. And according to city ordinance, they need an updated certificate of occupancy. In fact, they need annual updates of certificates of occupancy, not 20 years later. We challenged him on that.
Our folks showed up. Before I even came there, we sent our people there. They refused to let them in. So I needed to see that for myself. I came down there, one, with our folks and watched them turn them away and turn me away at the same time.
We went to court summarily after that. The courts had us in conversation, forced them to make them have an initial inspection. We did an initial inspection and found a few violations. After we find violations, we have to come back and check those violations. And we told them that they needed to apply for a certificate of occupancy. They refused to do that.
So, this is a dispute, a dispute that has to be settled in court, not by Alina Habba, not by, you know, the ICE or by the president, but by a court. A court settles these disputes, and it has not settled it yet. We’re still in court now.
AMY GOODMAN: You know, the detention facility, the largest on the East Coast, a thousand beds, is near Newark Airport. I mean, maybe the only hope for the detainees is that there have been so many outages at Newark that they wouldn’t be able to fly them out. But I wanted to ask you about the history. In 2021, advocates helped enact a law prohibiting New Jersey from renewing or signing detention contracts with ICE in New Jersey. Now, a federal district judge struck down parts of that in 2023 after private prison operators, like CoreCivic, which operates another immigration jail in the state, sued. “The state attorney general is appealing the ruling, invoking the 10th Amendment that stops the federal government from commandeering state resources for its purposes.” That is — I’m reading from The Washington Post. Can you respond to what you still are asking for? In a moment, we’re going to speak with one of the congressmembers who are still threatened with arrest, who did tour the facility. But what you’re demanding ICE give you now in terms of documentation? What you’re concerned about is happening to the detainees inside?
MAYOR RAS BARAKA: Well, we want them to start filling out the application for the certificate of occupancy that allows us to come in and do full inspections, health inspection, fire inspection, make sure they have the proper, you know, procedures that are happening. They have women in there, have children in there. We need to know how many people are in there, how many beds that they have there, if the sprinkler system works, if the gas system is hooked up correctly, the electrical system is hooked up, if the elevators are working properly. All of these things are a part of what a certificate of occupancy allows us to do. If they’re using the property for the stated use, or if they’re using it for anything else, do they need to go through the zoning board or planning board? And this is what happens for every facility, even a new home that you build and open. Everybody has to have a CO or temporary certificate of occupancy. And they have neither. And so, we’re in dispute about this.
I do think that the state should go further here and demand or write a law that says that we can’t have private prisons in New Jersey in the first place. I think we should go as far as that in the state.
AMY GOODMAN: I know you have to go, but I want to just get you to respond to a very ominous moment right before you were arrested — it was on Friday — with the White House official Stephen Miller saying he’s looking into, that the Trump administration is looking into suspending habeas corpus, which protects people from unlawful detentions. This is what he said.
STEPHEN MILLER: Well, the Constitution is clear — and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land — that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion. So, it’s an option we’re actively looking at. Look, a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not. The end of the day, Congress passed a body of law, known as the Immigration and Nationality Act, which stripped Article III courts — that’s the judicial branch — of jurisdiction over immigration cases. So, Congress actually passed — it’s called jurisdiction-stripping legislation. It passed a number of laws that say that the Article III courts aren’t even allowed to be involved in immigration cases.
AMY GOODMAN: So, if you, finally, can respond, just hours before you were arrested, to Stephen Miller saying they’re weighing stripping habeas corpus, they’re weighing doing away with it, because while it may not be wartime, we are in the midst of an invasion.
MAYOR RAS BARAKA: This is completely insane, and it’s a scary moment in the history of this country as we watch democracy slip between our fingers. I think that because Trump was elected and there’s still a process, we still have this separation of powers, that people believe that the separation of powers is going to fix this. This is not being fixed. People are watching this take place as authoritarianism becomes the rule of the land here in this country.
And we need more voices and more people to stand up against this. Suspending habeas corpus is something that happens in a time of war. You know, to relate this to war is definitely, definitely scary. It means that we’re in an existential threat here, and we need to stand up and do something about this immediately.
AMY GOODMAN: When do you have to go to court?
MAYOR RAS BARAKA: May 15, I go back to court for my preliminary hearing in the city of Newark, and hopefully the supporters will be out there supporting me.
AMY GOODMAN: Soon afterwards, there’s the primary for governor, is that right? June 10th?
MAYOR RAS BARAKA: Yes, June 10th, absolutely. Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Ras Baraka, I want to thank you for being with us, mayor of Newark, New Jersey, the largest city in New Jersey, yes, a Democratic candidate for governor in the state’s gubernatorial election this year. On Friday, the mayor was arrested by 20 armed, many masked, federal agents, standing on public property in his city of Newark. He was released after five hours.
