Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA) introduced a bill that would strip three Democrats of their House committee assignments over their involvement in a riot at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center.
Carter, who is running for the U.S. Senate in Georgia, introduced a resolution on Tuesday to strip Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ), LaMonica McIver (D-NJ), and Robert Menendez (D-NJ) of their committee assignments after they stormed and allegedly trespassed at the Delaney Hall ICE detention facility, Fox News reported.
“The radical left has lost their minds – they would rather raid an ICE facility to defend criminal illegal immigrants than represent their own constituents,” Carter wrote in a post on X. “The three Democratic members involved in this stunt do not deserve to sit on committees alongside serious lawmakers.”
Carter’s resolution calls for Watson Coleman to be removed from the Committee on Appropriations, for Menendez to be removed from the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and for McIver to be removed from the Committee on Homeland Security and the Committee on Small Business.
Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Alina Habba has announced that her office is “undertaking a thorough investigation” regarding the incident that occurred at Delaney Hall on Friday, in which Newark Mayor Ras Baraka (D) was arrested for allegedly criminally trespassing at the ICE detention facility.
Habba explained that Baraka had “committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself” from the ICE detention center.
Baraka’s arrest came after he had joined McIver, Watson Coleman, and Menendez to “conduct federal oversight of” Delaney Hall, which was leased for “$63 million annually from a private prison group,” according to PIX11 News:
Delany Hall was leased for $63 million annually from a private prison group known as The GEO Group. The city of Newark is suing for more inspections, claiming ICE has not indicated how many detainees it has in the building — which can only house 1,000 people.
During an interview on CNN, Watson Coleman claimed that “nothing happened,” adding that if anything, the Democrats were “pushed and shoved.” In response, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shared a video in a post on X, showing Democrats pushing and shoving law enforcement officials.
“Members of Congress storming into a detention facility goes beyond a bizarre political stunt and puts the safety of our law enforcement agents and detainees at risk,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “Members of Congress are not above the law and cannot illegally break into detention facilities. Had these members requested a tour, we would have facilitated a tour of the facility.”
In a statement on Friday, DHS explained that “as a bus of detainees was entering the security gate” at the ICE detention facility, “a group of protestors, including two members of US Congress, stormed the gate and broke into the detention facility.”
DHS has also released the mugshots and criminal records of several of the detainees being held at Delaney Hall, which include alleged MS-13 gang members and detainees who have multiple felony convictions and felony arrests.
