(Reuters) -The Democratic mayor of Newark, New Jersey, who is running to be the state’s governor, was arrested on Friday after refusing to leave a federal immigration detention center, the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey said in a statement posted on X.
Alina Habba, a former lawyer to President Donald Trump serving as acting U.S. attorney, said Mayor Ras Baraka “committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings” to leave a detention facility run by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Newark.
A spokesperson for Baraka did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It was not immediately clear if he was facing charges over the incident.
His arrest came as three Democratic members of Congress were also attending a demonstration at the facility, known as Delaney Hall. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security accused demonstrators of breaking into the facility when a bus of detainees arrived.
“These members of Congress storming into a detention facility goes beyond bizarre political stunt and puts the safety of our law enforcement agents and the detainees at risk,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey posted on X earlier on Friday that she was at the facility with two colleagues, LaMonica McIver and Robert Menendez Jr.
McIver, in a video posted on social media, said Baraka “did nothing wrong” and had already left the facility at the time of his arrest.
“This is unacceptable,” McIver said in the video.
Baraka is running for the Democratic nomination as New Jersey’s governor in a competitive field. The primary is scheduled for next month.
(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward; Editing by Leslie Adler and Chizu Nomiyama)
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