House Democrat Hits Back at DHS Over Arrest Threat: ‘I Did Not Body Slam Anyone’
Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) denied claims Sunday that she physically assaulted an ICE officer during a confrontation at a New Jersey detention facility that led to the arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka.
McIver appeared in body camera footage wearing a red blazer during a tense standoff between federal agents and Democratic lawmakers attempting to enter the Delaney Hall Detention Center.
The Department of Homeland Security has accused her and two other House Democrats of trespassing and claimed the group escalated the situation. The agency has also said McIver and the others could be arrested.
The Friday incident ended with Baraka being detained by DHS officers after allegedly ignoring multiple warnings to leave the facility. Baraka has denied wrongdoing.
In an interview on CNN’s State of the Union, anchor Dana Bash asked McIver to respond to allegations she “body slammed” an officer at the facility.
“I want to go back to some of the footage we were looking at, at some, and I want our viewers to see that you are the woman in the red blazer as we show them,” Bash said. “DHS says that obviously there were chaos, that maybe you were trespassing. You can talk about that.”
Bash added, “But DHS also says that, in their words, you were body slamming an ICE officer. Is that what we’re looking at? Is that what happened?”
McIver replied:
Absolutely no. I mean, I honestly do not know how to body slam anyone. There’s no video that supports me body slamming anyone. We, as Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman said, we were simply there to do our job. There for an oversight visit. What you are watching in the video, and we don’t have all of the body cam, and we hope that all of the body cam is released.
It was a very tense situation. It unfortunately did not have to be like that. They created that confrontation. They created that chaos and then ultimately went to arrest the mayor of the largest city of New Jersey, who is my mayor and my constituent. And it was very difficult to watch that happen. But absolutely, I did not body slam anyone.
McIver represents New Jersey’s 10th Congressional District and is a former Newark city councilmember.
Watch above via CNN.
