‘I’m the Next Person on Their List’
Since his return to the White House, Donald Trump has been wielding the power of the federal government to exact revenge on his political enemies and critics, including former president Joe Biden, universities, judges, news outlets, law firms, and international-student protesters. Among the administration’s latest targets is Representative LaMonica McIver, a freshman Democrat who represents New Jersey’s Tenth District, McIver and other lawmakers visited Delaney Hall, a newly opened immigration detention center in Newark last month; the oversight visit quickly devolved into chaos after federal agents scuffled with the officials outside the center and arrested Mayor Ras Baraka.
Two weeks later, federal authorities dropped the trespassing charges against Baraka — and instead filed new charges against McIver. The Trump administration has accused McIver of slamming her forearm into a federal agent and attempting to restrain him during the scuffle, for which she now faces two counts of “assaulting, resisting, and impeding certain officers or employees.” The charges carry a maximum sentence of up to 16 years. McIver has denounced the charges as politically motivated and an attempt to intimidate Democrats out of performing their oversight duties (it’s also not lost on McIver or her colleagues that the DOJ is targeting a recently elected Black woman from a blue state). In this lightly edited conversation, McIver talks about whether the charges affect how she approaches her job, the public reaction to the skirmish, and how Democrats should think about confronting the Trump administration.
Take me back to last month. Why did you go to this ICE detention center? What were you hoping to accomplish?
I went with Representatives Rob Menendez and Bonnie Watson Coleman to perform an oversight visit at Delaney Hall. This is something that we’ve done before: A couple of months ago, we went to another ICE facility in Rob’s district. There was no confrontation then. It was a smooth visit. Delaney Hall had just started receiving detainees on May 1, as far as we understood, so we wanted to go in there and check things out. The reason for us doing these unannounced visits is to make sure that the facilities are running up to par, that we’re holding the operators in the departments accountable. This is something that many people in Congress do. We have oversight responsibility.
You’re now facing assault charges after the scuffle outside the detention center. What was your reaction when you learned about the charges?
We were there to do our jobs. To have ICE and the Department of Homeland Security create that whole unnecessary situation out there was really shocking. Then, learning I was being charged with felony assault via Twitter — because that’s how I found out, on a post made by Trump’s personal lawyer and interim U.S. attorney Alina Habba — was, quite frankly, disheartening. It felt like a joke, but it’s not a joke. These charges are really serious. I could be facing up to 16 years. It is just difficult to understand that these charges are even happening, especially when I was there to do my job. But we’re taking it day by day.
What has the public reaction to those charges been like for you?
People are grateful to see that I’m doing my job performing oversight visits. We’ve gotten a lot of calls of support, like, “Thank you so much for doing your job.” At the same time, I’ve been getting other hateful calls and threats. Sometimes Republican members activate a base of MAGA supporters. It’s been very scary to say the least. I’m a mom, I’m a wife; I’m always thinking about safety, not just for me but also for the people that I love, and so it’s very concerning.
According to the census, about a third of people in your district were born outside the United States. How is the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown affecting your constituents?
Folks are holding rallies every day. Many residents are calling us, telling us how they’re disappointed because everything about the Trump administration and the GOP at this moment is based around cruelty, from immigration to their new “Big Beautiful Bill.” From ICE agents picking up a teen outside of his high school, to deporting children with cancer, to their continued disregard of any court order regarding returning Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Maryland, to trying to make a reality TV show out of folks trying to gain citizenship — this administration is extremely cruel. People in the community feel that; they know that; they see that. And there are domino effects, right? It doesn’t just impact the person that may be undocumented. These hateful policies impact entire communities.
Some of your Republican colleagues have also moved to censure and expel you from a seat that you’ve held for less than a year. What do you make of that?
It’s all about power and retaliation for the Trump administration and the GOP. I’m the next person on their list. I was exercising my oversight authority that day at Delaney Hall, not doing anything other than that. They want you not to do your job. They want to silence critics. The threats to expel me, the threats to kick me and my colleagues off of our committees, the threats to censor me — this is just a part of their intimidation tactics. But I’m not going to roll over. I don’t work for the president. I don’t work for the GOP members. The day that anybody can intimidate me out of not doing my job for the people that have elected me … That’s the day I will no longer be in public office.
Democratic voters across the country have been demanding that the party do more to stand up to Trump. What do you think you and your colleagues should be doing at this moment to combat his agenda? How do you think about wielding power while in the minority?
We as the New Jersey delegation have written so many letters to the Department of Justice about student visas, programs that they’re canceling, attacks on the Department of Education, and budget cuts. We also have to continue to show up at different events and be out there in those streets with the people who these policies impact the most. We’re in a very uncertain time, and we just have to think of new tools to fight back against the unhinged government that we’re dealing with right now. Moving forward, we need to push into 2026 and the midterm elections. People are very unhappy. We see Trump’s polling numbers dropping each and every day, especially with the new cuts on the table right now impacting Medicaid, and the efforts to kick people off of SNAP benefits by changing the program’s requirements.
And of course, oversight is one of the ways we hold people accountable. I’m grateful to see some of my colleagues doing unannounced visits to ICE detention centers inside their districts. We’ve seen many of them going out during recess week to visit some of these locations. We should continue to do that. Republicans should be doing the same thing, because that’s their job, too. And we shouldn’t let them intimidate us for doing that work.