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Is Civil Suit Discovery the Best Way to Deliver ICE Accountability? [1]

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Date: 2025-06-04

Newark, NJ Mayor Ras Baraka has announced a defamation and wrongful arrest civil case against interim US Attorney for NJ Alina Habba, a former Trump lawyer. ICE and other officials forcefully detained Baraka outside the New Jersey immigrant detention center.

This begs the question, “Does Mayor Baraka have means within his discovery process to get the names and affiliations of every officer on the scene?”

If so, can discovery reach further, looking for evidence that the Mayor was singled out for extra-judicial or retaliatory treatment? Presumably, ICE and other agents were there because of the ongoing protests for those detained mostly without due process.

As Newark’s Mayor, Baraka had the right not only to be there but to be let in to observe the conditions and he was. Ultimately he was asked to leave, and after the first prompting, he did.

But then agents were told to go outside the barriers and arrest him just as three state representatives arrived for their scheduled review of the facility as well. Pushing ensued, and LaMonica McIver was ultimately charged with assault of an officer the next day.

The question that Baraka and his lawyers should have the ability to pursue is: was he the bait?

Someone issued the intent to detain the mayor, likely within the communication circulating on the grounds at the time. It’s not a stretch to perceive that this confrontation of an arrest within a few feet of the narrow gate was set up to occur right as the NJ reps were trying to pass through a swarm of agents among multiple agencies.

Or was the timing of the commotion intended to defame Baraka, a declared Democratic candidate for governor?

Judging by the timing, who up the food chain orchestrated this? Was a call made to Stephen Miller before or during this encounter for advice on actions? If so, would that make Miller liable for a portion of the damages sought and perhaps awarded?

As MSNBC has noted, some of the officers there were from a branch of DHS, HSI or Homeland Security Investigations, that doesn’t have crowd or riot engagement training. What, if any, guidance did they get to not exceed their authority?

Digging deeper, did somebody issue a “code red” style order for harsh treatment? And being that, as Mayor Baraka has stated, trespassing is a state not a federal charge, were the arresting and/or detaining officers state or federal?

Let’s hope that the answers to these questions become big news this summer to add to the expected economic, judicial, and social fallout already brewing.

To see more on the Mayor Baraka controversy and other strong-arm authoritarian moves by the Trump justice department, go to www.aol.com/…

We need to see on public record what the orders of engagement were and who dictated the number and variety of state and federal agents on the scene in NJ that day. Simply “keeping the peace” does not seem to be the goal. What then is?

My goal is to find out all the political and punitive underpinnings in every ICE arrest. Through years of watching cop shows, we have a sense of very, very specific targets that officers are tasked with detaining.

They are called suspects. With regards to the entire immigrant detention process, let’s ask Congress to demand what the percentage is of actual subjects captured as a proportion of the whole. Were those two categories treated differently? And for those declared official suspects, what percentage have criminal records in the US?

Aren’t those the only ones that Trump said he’d detain? Of that number versus the whole, I’d put the over/under at between 3 and 7%.

All the rest are sacrificial pawns, random victims of scare tactics intended to terrorize across the nation.

So is this an example of the greatness that some were convinced that we needed more of?

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