Bulwark Takes - The Trump Team is Now Trying to Jail Members of Congress

Episode Date: May 20, 2025

Rep. LaMonica McIver faces charges after a tense visit to a New Jersey ICE facility. Sam Stein and Adrian Carrasquillo break down the confrontation, why Mayor Baraka’s charges are dropped, and how Democrats are responding.

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Next trip, share a house at Evermore Orlando Resort. You won't believe what you resorted to before. Hey guys, it's me, Sam Stein, managing editor of The Bulwark. I am joined by Adrian Carasquillo. He's the author of Huddled Masses. It's a great newsletter. You should be subscribing to that. We are here tonight to talk about some breaking news. About an hour ago, news broke that Alina Haba, the acting U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, was going to press forward with charges against a sitting member of Congress, Representative

LaMonica McIver, who was part of a trio of members of Congress, along with the Newark mayor, who went to a Newark detention facility, ICE detention facility, called Delaney Hall. Basically, this is a big deal. We're going to get into all that. Adrian's going to help unpack what's going on here. Before we do, as always, do subscribe to the feed. I really appreciate it. We really appreciate it. It's helpful for us. All right, Adrian. So basically, the backstory is a couple weeks ago, they go to this ice detention facility. A scuffle ensues outside of the facility. And then there were some questions about whether charges were going to be brought against the mayor, who is under different jurisdiction and law than the sitting members of Congress. It turns out that Habba announces tonight that she's going to not charge the Newark

mayor, but she is pressing forward with charges against the congresswoman she says in violation of title 18 united states code section 111 a1 for assaulting impeding and interfering with law enforcement before we get into like the legality of this and the politics of this for people who maybe didn't notice what happened or just don't have a really strong understanding what happened just unpack what happened and the scene that erupted outside Delaney Hall. Yeah, you had three House Democrats going along with the Newark mayor, Roz Baraka, who's running for governor. And they showed up to what they say, and which is true, they are able to provide oversight at ICE facilities. They said they wanted to get a tour. Of course, like you said, we're going to get into the politics. There's been so much talk.

When are Democrats going to step up? When are they going to fight back so this was the democrats showing up here and saying we don't want this had they announced how they showed up i think they showed up unannounced um but you know there was all this talk at that time of the democrats so they go there they get in but then they go outside and a scuffle ensues i think one of the issues and when you watch video, I know we'll show parts of it. There's like a public part. And then there's, you know, the agents trying to sort of like funnel the lawmakers. And then there's the private part.

So I think that's some of the discrepancy of, you know, and then you can even see in the video where people talk about the lawmakers are saying that they were the ones that were physically, you know, that the ICE agents were the ones that escalated the situation. Well, let's show that. You can see this is what took place outside of the detention facility. It gets pretty heated. You can see tempers flaring over. People are screaming at the ICE agents who had showed up with video cameras. Take a look. All right, so you got some of the flavor of it. Now, I think to your point, they are, the Habba's office is saying, look, there's private cameras footage, private camera footage that shows that the congresswoman was the one who initiated an

assault of the police officer and that the public footage that you saw from outside is not telling the entirety of the story. The congresswoman says it's plainly not true and that they are, to your point, Adrian, legally entitled to show up. It's in their power to just show up it's in congressional it's it's in their power to just show up and provide oversight of these facilities yeah and i mean again we have video of the incident you can see congresswoman mcgyver saying you can't touch me don't touch me and you see menendez saying something similarly uh so that's pretty it's just pretty insane there was uh afterwards the congresswoman had okay so let's read a little bit from her statement. She says, this is the statement she issued tonight.

The charges against me are purely political. They mischaracterize and distort my actions and are meant to criminalize and deter legislative oversight. The administration will never stop me from working for the people in our district and setting up for what is right. Let's just step back a little bit. You talked a little bit about this idea that they wanted, Democrats wanted to ramp up their opposition to what was happening in ICE detention facilities. How are you, what are you getting from your reporting before the charges were announced? I should note they haven't quite hit the dock yet, but before the charges were announced today and maybe a little bit from your, what you're seeing after there and they've been announced. Is there, is there a change in an approach that you can talk about? How are Democrats

internalizing all this? I think, I think what's crazy in light of these charges that came is, is I had spoken to House Democrats for my newsletter last week, where they said that, you know, this seemed like good politics at the time and Democrats, again, getting that push to fight back. And what they got instead was just like a white hot response from the administration in terms of retribution, in terms of like Trump aligned media, like Fox News, just jumping on this narrative that it was the Democrats that were attacking. And so what I found interesting is a congressional Hispanic caucus lawmaker told me, quote, that they want to lean in and say we should do a day of action at detention centers. But they told me they don't think that's a good idea because of this response that they got from the administration. And I mean,

when you see the Democrats today, tonight, saying that this is an effort to intimidate, it gets you thinking about intimidate what? And I think it's to intimidate it it gets you thinking about intimidate what and i think it's to intimidate opposition that actually yeah that that but also that the trump administration does not want to see i think it's effective when democrats show up but it sounds like attention centers and say hey what the hell is that in fact what the administration has done here which has thrown the book at these people uh and in with conservative media, that it is actually having its intended outcome, which is to persuade them to not do some similar types of protest. Yeah, I think that's right. And I think that that's what's fascinating as we see, there's been so many issues around due process around US citizens being taken.

We saw some Democrats go to Mexico because one of the children had cancer that was taken. And so this seems like fertile ground for Democrats to fight back on. And then you see how strongly the Trump administration is going against them, which, yes, is sort of scaring them into saying, oh, well, maybe if we're going to face that the administration has crossed a red line by leveling charges against a sitting member of Congress. And certainly this feels, I mean, it's new, right? Like this is not something we've seen as far as I'm concerned before. It's an attack on one branch against another. The administration might rationalize and say, look, she broke a law. We have to enforce it. But it certainly is an escalation. So Swalwell says it's a red line

crossed. The House Democratic leadership is out with a statement, obviously standing in support of Representative McIver. But I mean, you've had prior reporting on Minority Leader Jeffries having some discomfort with these, you know, these sort of more aggressive forms of protest. Do you think some of this is just leadership saying we don't, we're still not sure the politics work for us? No, that's a good way of putting it. I think it's like, sort of like wading through trying to understand. I mean, you know, you can start saying, well, El Salvador, maybe and maybe Kilmar, maybe that's not the right case. Maybe we focus on children. Maybe we focus on US citizens. We focus on U.S. citizens.

The problem, I think, is these red lines add up. You have the judge. Well, they arrested a judge who was now released in Wisconsin, Milwaukee. You have lawmakers now. And let's remember that these things are connected. The lawmakers weren't just there alone. They were also activists. A huge thing that has been chilled in the Trump administration is protest and is saying this is not okay so when so you know democrats right now want to make this to say this is not just about immigration this is about due process i find this

fascinating because what they do next really does set the standard for we what they're going to ask people to do if they can't muster up an appropriate response to one of their own lawmakers being arrested, how can they expect people to go out in the street and protest? How can they expect people to rally behind migrants or people who are wrongfully detained if they're not willing to stand up for their own? If they're being chilled right now by the administration response, they have to respond in kind and strongly to show this is not okay once a week arresting a lawmaker past this news but are you getting a sense from any of your sources about what kind of response

we could potentially see to this i have not heard that much tonight i expect more tomorrow i think it's just like you said it's going to be really instructive to see what happens next it is does this disappear for a while like we had heard there'd be more el salvador trips there haven't been right um and do they right there hasn Salvador trips. There haven't been, right? Those are going to come. I haven't seen it. There hasn't been anything since, and that's something I'm following. So that's really interesting just to see sort of like do Democrats continue to fight back? All the shit that the Jeffries people threw at you for your story, you should point out. We haven't had a trip since, so maybe you had them dead to rights.

Yeah. You don't want to engage on that one, perhaps. No, no, no. It's something I'm keeping an eye on because I have noticed that there is often any trips. So that you don't give away the game. All right. Well, let's keep an eye on that. Let's keep an eye on the response that Democrats give to this remarkable development tonight where, again, Alina Hab haba the acting attorney general for new

jersey has said she will charge congresswoman mckiver for uh disrupting and impeding and interfering with law enforcement at an ice detention facility in new jersey uh we are increasingly getting to a very bad place where the two branches of government are well they're pitted against each other, more or less. Adrian, thanks so much for keeping on top of this stuff. To the viewers, thank you so much for tuning in to watch us talk about this stuff. We really appreciate it.

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