BY WALTER ELLIOTT
NEWARK – Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Fire Official Gwendolyn Saleem returned to 451-479 Doremus Ave. – Delaney Hall – Tuesday morning to attempt entering the immigrant/deportee detention facility as they had daily since May 5 – and was interrupted by the Mayor’s May 9 arrest, detention and release.
Baraka and Saleem – accompanied by anti-deportation demonstrators, other public officials and media outlets – found that Tuesday’s entrance staffed by eight riot-uniformed federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Department of Homeland Security officers like all the other days – except that plastic Jersey barrier-style barriers were placed 20 feet before the gate.
Baraka and Saleem, again, were not allowed by ICE, DHS and private operator GEO Group to enter the gate and the 1,196-bed capacity building. The mayor stayed outside for 30 minutes while hall manager Lee Tatum told Newark Corporate Counsel Eric Pennington that he would have to consult his superiors whether Baraka could enter and call him back. Saleem, this time, was permitted to approach the gate and affix summonses for state fire safety violations – including refusing a follow-up inspection.
The mayor, while departing, was asked if he was concerned that he would be arrested by DHS again.
“I don’t know what they’d do; I know they know who I am,” he said. “They said, ‘There goes the Mayor right there.’ ” He added that he will plead not guilty when he is scheduled to appear before a federal court judge here on May 15.
Uniformed and plainclothes DHS officers arrested Baraka outside the gate, brought him into the hall as a detained suspect for five hours until he was released by a federal judge by 8 p.m. May 9.
Newly appointed U.S. Attorney-New Jersey District Alma Habba, in her social media post from Newark, said that the mayor had “committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself from the ICE detention center in Newark.”
Baraka was not the first to be arrested during the city and State of New Jersey’s dispute with DHS over reopening Delaney Hall to detain prospective deportees since May 1.
Two demonstrators were arrested for trespassing by Newark Police just after 5 p.m. May 12, during a hall shift change, in an interstate faith leaders’ protest. Some 25 ministers, rabbis and others blocked the gate before 5 p.m. before 100 protestors and media representatives when ICE/DHS agents tried to part them for an incoming ambulance and departing employees.
A DHS social media posting added that the Monday demonstrators were blocking a bus of deportees that had arrived.
The arrestees, said Newark Public Safety Director Emanuel Miranda Monday, were charged with obstruction and resisting arrest.
There may be more arrests – including Congress members who were with Baraka that Friday afternoon.
DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said May 10 that they are examining the video footage of the Friday afternoon scuffle involving the House of Representatives’ LaMonica McIver (D-Newark), Rob Menendez (D-Hoboken) and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Camden).
“We actually have body camera footage of these Congress members assaulting ICE enforcement officers,” said McLaughlin on CNN Saturday morning, “including body slamming a female ICE officer.”
McLaughlin and other federal spokespersons claim that McIver, Menendez, Watson-Coleman and Baraka were leading a group trying to “storm” Delaney Hall. The Congress members and their spokespersons called the DHS accusations “lies.”
“Threatening to arrest Congress members for exercising their lawful oversight authority is another example of this administration abusing to try to intimidate anyone who stands up to them,” said a Watson-Coleman aide. “ICE agents have put their hands on Congress members; it also proves that DHS is lying about this incident.”
The three House members, indeed, had intended to hold a press conference that Friday afternoon on their attempt to gain hall entry. They said that, as Congress members, they do not need an appointment to inspect the contracted federal facility.
Mayor Baraka has said that he came to the hall’s driveway. to show his support of the three. He was also trying to gain access for Newark’s fire and construction code officials so they can inspect the generation-old hall and grant a certificate of occupation since DHS awarded GEO Group a $1 billion, 15-year contract Feb. 27 to house up to 1,000 detainees.
GEO, of Boca Raton, which has owned the hall and used it for federal detainees 2011-19, has been challenging a 2019 state law that prohibits future private operation of prisons. President Joseph Biden (D-Del.) had signed a 2021 executive order to phase out prison contracts with private operators like GEO and CoreCivic.
The daily demonstrations began when the word came out that ICE and GEO began housing detainees on May 1. Federal and hall officials have said that city and state inspectors need to make an appointment to inspect – if they need to be locally inspected at all.
DHS and allied federal law enforcement agencies have been hard pressed to meet President Donal J. Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order to deport up to 1,500 people daily. Existing federal prisons and contracted prisons are experiencing capacity levels – and some of the attorneys of the detainees say these are unhealthy conditions.
The afternoon of May 9 started out like most previous days at Delaney’s gate: Mayor Baraka and city inspectors asked to enter to present safety violations before a protesting crowd and media at 7 a.m. They were denied and they left.
Baraka and several city officials returned to support the Congressional delegation. Witnesses and video recordings demonstrated that ICE agents opened the gate to allow Baraka and his aide in. The mayor asked the guards if the Congress members would be allowed; he said he was told that they were – but not him.
The mayor had walked back outside the gate when federal agents followed to arrest him. Several people, including Congress members, tried to shield Baraka. The scuffle ended when agents handcuffed him and brought him back inside the gate. The delegation, minutes later, were allowed in to make their inspection.
Most of that afternoon’s group stayed outside the gates until Baraka’s release. He said that he had been put in a cell, fingerprinted, stood for a mugshot before a federal judge had released him.
“We don’t know what’s going on in there, who’s in there; they’re not allowing inspectors,” said Baraka. “They’re not complying with local laws; they feel that they don’t have to go to court.”
The five colleagues who are vying with Baraka for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination – Steve Fulop, Josh Gottheimer, Mikie Sherrill, Sean Spillar and Steve Sweeney – expressed support and urged for his release that night.
“The Mayor has every right to enforce the laws of his city and should be released immediately,” said Sweeney (D-Robbinsville) for example. “Donald Trump’s disregard for the rule of law is in full display this afternoon.”
One Republican primary candidate, Jack Ciattarelli, wants Baraka to concentrate on Newark Liberty International Airport’s communication breakdowns instead of confronting ICE/DHS at Delaney Hall.
“In Newark, the airport is in the midst of an unprecedented and dangerous meltdown, the public schools are failing students and families and there’s crime in the streets every day.” said former Assemblyman Ciattarelli, of Somerville. “Yet its mayor and leading Democrat candidate for Governor, Ras Baraka, is busy shilling for illegal immigrants at an ICE detention center with a cheap publicity stunt.”
The 2021 Republican challenger to Murphy was referring to three communication and radar breakdowns on April 28, May 9 and May 11 that delayed at least 700 flights and canceled at least 228 others at the nation’s 13th busiest airport and second busiest in the metropolitan New York region.
While the first two radar communication losses were between Philadelphia’s TRACON and the airport for 150 seconds overall, Sunday morning’s lapse was to an on-site air traffic control backup system. The mishaps underscored the need for the world’s most complex ATC network to train and hire more controllers and to update early 1980s-era equipment.
The nearest Mayor Baraka can be involved with EWR is with renegotiating the city’s long term lease to operator Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Correcting EWR and the nation’s STC woes lie with the FAA, as unveiled by U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy May 8, and will take at least four years to ultimately remedy.
