Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) on Tuesday said she rebuffed efforts from the Trump administration to strike a plea deal ahead of pending assault charges stemming from her visit to an immigration detention center, saying they wanted her to “admit to doing something that I did not do.”
Interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba announced Monday she planned to charge McIver with assaulting a law enforcement officer – thought she has yet to actually do so.
McIver has said she did nothing wrong during a visit to a U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility where chaos ensued as officers arrested Newark Mayor Ras Baraka (D).
“Well, the Justice Department and Alina Habba wanted me to admit to doing something that I did not do, and I was not going to do that once again. I came there to do my job and conduct an oversight visit, and they wanted me to say something differently, and I'm not doing that. I'm not going to roll over and stop doing my job because they don't want me to, or they want to neglect the fact that we needed to be in there to see what was going on and that detention center, and so, absolutely, no, I was not going to do that,” McIver said during a Tuesday appearance on CNN.
“[I’m] definitely always open to conversations, but I'm not going to admit to something that I did not do, and no one's going to stop me from serving the people in New Jersey.”
Footage from the incident shows McIver being jostled in the crowd, but she has contested accusations she “body slammed” anyone.
In her Tuesday interview, McIver pushed back on claims she was violent, noting that after the scuffle she and two other New Jersey lawmakers were still given a tour of the facility.
“We were there to conduct an oversight visit, which, after all of this, the chaos, Kate, they gave us a tour. All of this, ‘we broke in, we assaulted people,’ all of these things that Habba is saying and Republicans are saying, but they gave us a tour and allowed us to go in and tour the facility and speak to detainees,” she said.
McIver added their main goal was to assess conditions in the facility, noting that immigrants held there were not always able to reach their attorneys.
“The reason why we were there is because we wanted to make sure this facility was up to par, that it was clean, that it was safe, and that the detainees there were given due process, that they were able to use the phone, that they were able to speak to their legal representation,” she said, “which we found out was not happening.”
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