LaMonica McIver and the "Lock Her Up" President

[struggle4progress]

Inae Oh
Senior News and Engagement Editor

Depending on whom you ask, the United States is either sliding into fascism or smack in the middle of it. Either way, it’s not good. But should future historians attempt to identify when this fascist crackdown kicked off in earnest, they may settle on Rep. LaMonica McIver.

In May, the Justice Department charged the New Jersey congresswoman with three counts of assaulting and interfering with law enforcement officials after a chaotic clash outside Delaney Hall, a private immigration detention center in Newark plagued by reports of inhumane conditions. At the time, McIver— along with Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and two other Democratic members of Congress—had been conducting a congressionally mandated oversight visit when masked officers suddenly pounced to arrest Baraka. Ten days later, prosecutors dropped the trespassing charges against Baraka, only to then federally charge McIver ...

Alina Habba, the US attorney who filed the charges against McIver, hasn’t been shy about describing her work as overtly political: Shortly after her appointment, Habba said on a podcast that she believed her efforts as a prosecutor could help “turn New Jersey red.” (Habba, a former personal lawyer for Trump, is now at the center of an extraordinary showdown between the Trump administration and federal courts after a judge ruled last week that she has been unlawfully serving as the state’s US attorney since July) ...

Plenty of members of Congress have been charged with crimes over the years, mostly over various forms of corruption. But charges against McIver sure look like a pretext for prosecuting her over her politics. That hasn’t been attempted since shortly after the founding of this country. You have to reach back to 1799, when Rep. Matthew Lyon of Vermont—also known as the “Spitting Congressman” after spewing tobacco juice into the face of a Federalist lawmaker—was imprisoned for violating the Alien and Sedition Acts over his authorship of editorials critical of President John Adams ...

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/08/lamonica-mciver-trump-lock-her-up-president/

[struggle4progress]

1. She Isn't Flinching

... Today, Delaney Hall holds 548 individuals — 89 percent of whom have no criminal record — rounded up in the Trump administration’s immigration dragnet.

On May 9, a few days after GEO Group began housing detainees at the Newark detention center, three members of Congress representing New Jersey — Democratic Representatives Bonnie Watson Coleman, Rob Menendez, and LaMonica McIver, in whose district the facility sits — arrived at Delaney Hall to perform an oversight visit.

Weeks earlier, the same delegation checked in on a similar facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. (Such inspections are a routine part of Congress’ function.) But, this time, their tour was being slow-walked. The members of Congress had already been waiting for an hour and half when Newark Mayor Ras Baraka arrived. Baraka was standing inside the fenced area — a guard let him in — when nearly two dozen officers arrived and confronted him. They told Baraka he was trespassing, and threatened to arrest him ...

The charges against the mayor were dropped a little more than a week later. But they were replaced by new ones: this time against McIver, who was indicted for “assaulting, impeding, and interfering” with a federal officer — a trio of charges that, together, carry a maximum sentence of 17 years in prison ...

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/lamonica-mciver-new-jersey-democrat-assault-indictment-1235416765/