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    U.S. Sues Four New Jersey Cities Over ‘Sanctuary’ Policies

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    Justice Department lawyers say in a lawsuit that Newark, Jersey City, Hoboken and Paterson are shielding illegal immigrants from lawful prosecution.The Justice Department has sued four New Jersey cities and their leaders over so-called sanctuary policies that federal lawyers say are hindering the Trump administration’s enforcement of U.S. immigration laws. With their policies, the cities, Newark, Jersey City, Hoboken and Paterson, are shielding illegal immigrants from lawful prosecution, Justice Department lawyers write in a lawsuit filed in federal court in Newark on Thursday. “While states and local governments are free to stand aside as the United States performs this important work, they cannot stand in the way,” the lawsuit says. “And where inaction crosses into obstruction, local governments break federal law.”The suit was filed a day after a judge dismissed federal trespassing charges that had been filed against Mayor Ras Baraka of Newark this month after his arrest outside a new Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center where people were protesting. Mr. Baraka said at a hearing last week that he had been “targeted” for selective enforcement. He was named as a defendant in the suit filed on Thursday, as were Mayor Steven Fulop of Jersey City, Mayor Andre Sayegh of Paterson and Mayor Ravi Bhalla of Hoboken. All are Democrats; Mr. Fulop and Mr. Baraka are candidates in the Democratic primary for governor. Mr. Fulop said he had learned of the lawsuit from a post on the social media app X. “I think it’s a political sideshow,” he said. “It’s a stunt.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. Fights to Keep Mahmoud Khalil From Holding His Month-Old Child

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      A judge ordered the Trump administration to let Mr. Khalil meet with his wife and infant son before a hearing on his immigration case. It was unclear whether they would be separated by plexiglass.On Wednesday evening, hours before the latest immigration hearing in the case of Mahmoud Khalil, the Trump administration was in the midst of pitched battle to prevent Mr. Khalil from holding his 1-month-old son.Lawyers for Mr. Khalil, a Columbia University graduate who was a leading figure in pro-Palestinian protests on the campus, have been fighting for days to win him what is known as a “contact visit” with his wife and child. Mr. Khalil, who is being detained in Louisiana, has not seen his wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, in person since he was arrested in March, and has never met their son, Deen, who was born on April 21.On Wednesday, a New Jersey judge, Michael E. Farbiarz, ordered the administration to allow Mr. Khalil to hold a single joint meeting with his wife and his lawyers. But it was unclear whether the judge’s order would permit Mr. Khalil to meet his son, given Trump officials’ reluctance to allow such a visit.“Granting Khalil this relief of family visitation would effectively grant him a privilege that no other detainee receives,” Justice Department officials wrote in a court filing on Wednesday. “Allowing Dr. Abdalla and a newborn to attend a legal meeting would turn a legal visitation into a family one.”Their filing also included an affidavit from Brian Acuna, the acting director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in New Orleans.“Because the facility does not house female detainees or minors, it is unsafe to allow Mr. Khalil’s wife and newborn child into a secured part of the facility,” Mr. Acuna wrote, adding that a contact visit had “never been offered to any other detainee.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      New Jersey congresswoman LaMonica McIver charged with assault after clash at detention center

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      US representative LaMonica McIver, a Democrat, was charged with assaulting federal agents after a clash outside an immigration detention center in New Jersey, the state’s federal prosecutor announced on Monday.Alina Habba, interim US attorney, said in a post on social media that McIver was facing charges “for assaulting, impeding and interfering with law enforcement” when she visited the detention center along with two other Democratic members of the New Jersey congressional delegation on 9 May.“No one is above the law – politicians or otherwise,” Habba said in a statement. “It is the job of this office to uphold justice impartially, regardless of who you are. Now we will let the justice system work.”McIver on Monday accused federal law enforcement of escalating the situation, saying that it was the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents who “created an unnecessary and unsafe confrontation”.“The charges against me are purely political – they mischaracterise and distort my actions, and are meant to criminalise and deter legislative oversight,” she said.At the same time, Habba announced her office was dismissing a misdemeanor trespassing charge against Ras Baraka, the Democratic mayor of Newark, whose arrest instigated the clash with federal agents.Baraka, the mayor of New Jersey’s largest city and a candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor, was arrested and charged with trespassing as he sought to join the congressional delegation at Delaney Hall, a privately run federal immigration detention center.Habba, who served as Trump’s personal lawyer before being named to the post, said she had dismissed the charge “for the sake of moving forward” and offered to personally accompany Baraka on a tour of the facility, declaring the government has “nothing to hide”.View image in fullscreenKristi Noem, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, wrote on X that McIver was being charged after a “thorough review of the video footage and an investigation”.Body camera footage released by the agency and shared with Fox News shows a chaotic scene outside the facility’s chain-link fence as the mayor is arrested. During the scuffle, McIver walks through the gate and appears to make contact with a law enforcement officer wearing fatigues and a face covering. It is unclear if the contact is intentional, accidental or the result of being caught in the scrum.Meanwhile, footage from witnesses on the scene appears to contradict the government’s claim that members of Congress stormed the facility.Paul Fishman, an attorney for McIver called the decision to charge the congresswoman “spectacularly inappropriate”, arguing she had the “right and responsibility to see how Ice is treating detainees”.“Rather than facilitating that inspection, Ice agents chose to escalate what should have been a peaceful situation into chaos,” Fishman, the former US attorney for the District of New Jersey, said in a statement.Democrats and legal advocates reacted with alarm on Monday, casting the prosecution of the congresswoman as an attempt to deter legislative oversight and stifle opposition to the Trump administration’s immigration policies, which have included raids and deportations without due process.In a joint statement, House Democratic leaders on Monday condemned the charges as “extreme, morally bankrupt and [lacking] any basis in law or fact”.“There is no credible evidence that Rep McIver engaged in any criminal activity,” the Democrats said, noting that after the incident, Trump administration officials led the members of Congress on a tour of the facility, which they said would not have been permitted “had she done anything wrong”.In a statement on Monday, Bakara welcomed the dismissal of charges against him, but said he would “continue to advocate for the humane treatment of detainees” and “continue to press the facility to ensure that it is compliant with City of Newark codes and regulations”. He also made clear that he stood with McIver, whom he called a “daughter of Newark”. “I fully expect her to be vindicated,” he said.Mike Zamore, national director of policy and government affairs at the ACLU, and Amol Sinha, executive director of ACLU-NJ, warned that the charges against a sitting member of Congress were “more suited for authoritarianism than American democracy”.“If the Trump administration can target elected officials who oppose its extreme agenda, it can happen to any one of us,” they wrote. “We demand that they drop the charges against Rep McIver, and we implore her fellow members of Congress to call for the same.” More

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      New Jersey Transit and Engineers’ Union Agree to Deal to End Strike

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      The agency said its trains would start running again on Tuesday morning.An agreement was reached on Sunday to end New Jersey’s first statewide transit strike in more than 40 years just three days after it started, New Jersey Transit and a union spokesman said.The union that represents the state’s passenger-train drivers, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, said it called off the strike at about 6 p.m., and NJ Transit said its trains would begin running a full schedule again on Tuesday morning.Kris Kolluri, the chief executive of NJ Transit, said it would take a day to conduct safety inspections and inspect tracks before service could resume.For Monday, the agency said, it would rely on its original strike contingency plan involving chartered buses running from four satellite locations into New York City or to stations on the PATH commuter train service.“The sound that you probably hear is the sound of our state’s commuters breathing a collective sigh of relief, said Gov. Philip D. Murphy, who announced the agreement at a news conference on Sunday night.“If both employers and employees could please give us one more day of work from home, that would be a huge, huge boost,” Mr. Murphy said. State officials had asked commuters to work from home during the strike if their presence in the workplace was not considered essential.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Couple Imprisoned Girl for 7 Years and Kept Her in Dog Cage, Police Say

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      Investigators, who did not identify the teenager, now 18, said they believed she had been sexually abused by her stepfather.One evening last week, a barefoot teenage girl with a shaved head burst into her next-door neighbor’s home in Blackwood, N.J., sat down on the couch and began to spill out a harrowing story.She said her stepfather and mother had imprisoned her at their home for the past seven years, ever since they pulled her out of elementary school with the excuse that she would be home-schooled. She said they locked her in a dog crate for an entire year, and at one point had chained her up in a bathroom. She said her stepfather had sexually abused her.This week, following a police investigation, prosecutors in Camden County, in South Jersey just outside Philadelphia, announced several charges against her mother, Brenda Spencer, 38, and stepfather, Branndon Mosely, 41. They included assault, criminal restraint, kidnapping and weapons offenses; Mr. Mosely also faces numerous counts of sexual assault.“The investigation has corroborated the heinous acts endured by the victim and we will hold those responsible accountable,” Lt. Andy McNeil, a spokesman for the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office, said in an interview. Authorities did not identify the 18-year-old teenager.Mr. Mosely is a rail conductor for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, the transit system that serves the Philadelphia region, and Ms. Spencer is a dog handler who specializes in Great Danes, the authorities said. They are being held in jail while they await a detention hearing scheduled for next week. Lawyers for the couple declined to comment.Days after the distressed teenage girl barreled into the home where he was staying, Michael Lacey, a 36-year-old pool cleaner, said he kept breaking down in tears over the brutality she had described.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Newark mayor says prosecutors tried to ‘humilate’ him by forcing redo of fingerprints and mugshot

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      Ras Baraka, the Democratic mayor of Newark, said federal prosecutors were seeking to “humiliate and degrade” him by making him give fingerprints and have a mugshot taken for a second time on Thursday.The move came after a court appearance on a trespassing charge stemming from his arrest at an immigration detention center where he was protesting with several members of Congress.The charges against Baraka have unfolded amid fears that the Trump administration is seeking to prosecute Democratic politicians, judges or others who have opposed its policies.Baraka appeared in court for a roughly 15-minute procedural hearing before magistrate judge André Espinosa. The hearing covered mostly scheduling for discovery in the case, which stemmed from an encounter on Friday outside the Delaney Hall immigration detention center.Assistant prosecutor Stephen Demanovich said the government disputed Baraka’s claims that he committed no crime and was invited on to the facility’s property. Confusion over whether Baraka had been fingerprinted and processed after his arrest unfolded after the judge brought the proceedings to a close.As the parties began to walk away, the judge added that the mayor would need to be processed by the US Marshals Service and that it would take 10 minutes. Baraka, looking confused, said he had already been processed after his arrest. The judge said “agents” had processed him but not the marshals.“Let’s go,” Baraka said, before indicating he would go with the marshals.Speaking to a crowd of supporters outside court, Baraka addressed why it took him a while to emerge from the building.“They’re trying their best to humiliate and degrade me as much as they possibly can,” he said. “I feel like what we did was completely correct. We did not violate any laws. We stood up for the constitution of this country, the constitution of the state of New Jersey.”The trespassing charge against Baraka carries a maximum sentence of 30 days in prison.One of Baraka’s attorney’s, Rahul Agarwal, said the defense expected to seek to dismiss the charges because the mayor was arrested by federal agents on private property. He added that it was a “selective prosecution” and that only the mayor had been arrested.Demanovich said the government disputed that but did not go into detail.Baraka has been an outspoken opponent of Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and a vocal opponent of the facility’s opening.In video of the Friday altercation shared with the Associated Press, a federal official in a jacket with the homeland security investigations logo can be heard telling Baraka he could not enter because “you are not a Congress member”.Baraka then left the secure area, rejoining protesters on the public side of the gate. Video showed him speaking through the gate to a man in a suit, who said: “They’re talking about coming back to arrest you.”“I’m not on their property. They can’t come out on the street and arrest me,” Baraka replied.Minutes later, several Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents, some wearing face coverings, surrounded him and others on the public side. Baraka was dragged back through the gate in handcuffs.Delaney Hall is a two-storey building next to a county prison and formerly operated as a halfway house. In February, Immigration and Customs Enforcement awarded a 15-year contract to the Geo Group Inc to run the detention center.Politicians and activists have said facility has been reopened in contravention of local ordinances and without the necessary permits. It is the largest such facility in the north-eastern US, and the first to open during Trump’s second term, according to Ice.A trial date for Baraka has not yet been set.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Trump officials ‘created confrontation’ that led to arrest of Newark mayor

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      Trump administration homeland security officials were responsible for starting the confrontation on Friday at a New Jersey immigration jail that led to the arrest of Newark’s mayor as well as threats to detain three members of Congress, the representatives said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.The Democratic Congress members Bonnie Watson Coleman, LaMonica McIver and Rob Menendez – all of New Jersey – visited the controversial Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention center known as Delaney Hall on Friday to inspect the facility. As they waited to enter Delaney Hall, Newark’s mayor Ras Baraka arrived – and as he left the property, he was arrested outside by Ice officials accusing him of trespassing, leading to a commotion at the entrance of the jail.There evidently was shoving and pushing between federal immigration officials and the members of Congress, which Watson Coleman, McIver and Menendez blamed on the immigration officials.On CNN’s State of the Union, the Congress members said immigration officials had ample opportunity to deescalate the situation before someone called in and instructed masked agents to arrest Baraka.“They created that confrontation, they created that chaos,” McIver said.Since the ordeal on Friday at Delaney Hall, homeland security officials have accused the Congress members of staging a “bizarre political stunt” there while also accusing McIver of “bodyslamming” authorities at the scene.McIver rejected those allegations.“I honestly do not know how to bodyslam anyone,” McIver said. “There’s no video that supports me bodyslamming anyone.“We were simply there to do our job – there for an oversight visit.”For their part, officials have threatened to arrest the three members of Congress in connection with Friday’s commotion at Delaney Hall. Watson Coleman told CNN on Sunday that those threats stemmed from the Trump administration’s “determination to intimidate people in this country”.The Delaney Hall facility was recently reopened by Ice, as the agency continues to expand its detention network to assist in the Trump administration’s aspirations to carry out mass deportations. The facility operator says it has the capacity to detain 1,000 people.Delaney Hall is owned by Geo Group, a massive, private prison company with Ice facilities throughout the US. The Trump administration in February gave a 15-year contract worth $1bn to Geo Group to operate Delaney Hall.However, the new contract comes amid legal challenges to Ice detention in New Jersey. Newark’s municipal government recently filed a lawsuit against Geo Group claiming that the company did not have the proper permits to operate the facility.There is also a separate legal battle playing out in a federal appellate court related to private immigration detention in the state. In 2021, New Jersey governor Phil Murphy signed a law barring immigration detention in the state. Another private prison company, CoreCivic, which runs the only other immigration jail in the state, sued New Jersey’s state government.CoreCivic received support from the Biden administration in its suit, and a federal judge ruled in favor of the company. The state challenged the federal judge’s decision, and a federal appellate court heard arguments for the case only recently. More

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      US transportation secretary plans to reduce flights at Newark airport

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      The US transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, plans to reduce the number of flights in and out of the Newark Liberty international airport for the “next several weeks”, as the facility – one of the country’s busiest airports – struggles with radar outages, numerous flight delays and cancellations due to a shortage of air traffic controllers.Speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press, Duffy said he would convene a meeting with all the airlines flying out of Newark this week to determine the reduction, adding that it would fluctuate, with a larger reduction coming in the afternoons when international flight arrivals make it busier at the airport, one of the main hubs serving the New York City area.“We want to have a number of flights that if you book your flight, you know it’s going to fly, right?” he said. “That is the priority. So you don’t get to the airport, wait four hours, and then get delayed.”The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said radar at the facility in Philadelphia that directs planes in and out of Newark airport went black for 90 seconds at 3.55am Friday, similar to an incident on 28 April.On Sunday morning, a separate air traffic control equipment outage caused the FAA to implement a ground stop of about 45 minutes for Newark flights, CNN transportation reporter Pete Muntean wrote in an X post that cited an advisory from the air traffic control system command center.An equipment outage Sunday also led to a ground stop at Hartfield-Jackson Atlanta airport beginning at about 10.40am to noon local time, another air traffic control system command center advisory said.There has been an average of 34 arrival cancellations per day since mid-April at Newark, according to the FAA, with the number of delays increasing throughout the day from an average of five in the mornings to 16 by the evening. They tend to last 85 to 137 minutes on average.The Trump administration proposed a multibillion-dollar overhaul of the US air traffic control system on Thursday that includes six new air traffic control centers as well as technology and communications upgrades at all of the nation’s air traffic facilities over the next three or four years.Duffy said on Sunday that he also planned to raise the mandatory retirement age for air traffic controllers from 56 to 61 as he tries navigating a shortage of about 3,000 people in that specialized position.He plans to give those air traffic controllers a 20% upfront bonus to stay on the job. However, he says many air traffic controllers choose to retire after 25 years of service, which means many retire at about the age of 50.“These are not overnight fixes,” Duffy said. “But as we go up – one, two years, older guys on the job, younger guys coming in, men and women – we can make up that 3,000-person difference.”Asked on Sunday whether it was safe to fly in and out of the Newark airport given the various issues there and elsewhere, United Airlines’ chief executive officer, Scott Kirby – whose company uses the facility as a hub – said: “It absolutely is.”“And the reason is, when these kinds of outages happen, we train for them,” Kirby added. “We have backup procedures. We have backups to backups to backups to keep the sky safe, which is always the number one priority.”Guardian staff contributed reporting More

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      New Jersey mayor to continue fight against Ice detention center after arrest

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      Speaking out after his arrest on Tuesday, the Newark mayor Ras Baraka said his city would continue its fight in court against the company that runs an immigration detention facility in New Jersey.“I know there are some protests that other people are planning, and if I feel obligated to be there, I will,” Baraka told the Rev Al Sharpton on MSNBC Saturday afternoon. “This doesn’t stop the city’s contention with the Geo Group, and we’re going to continue in court with them.”Baraka was arrested Tuesday morning after joining three members of Congress at a protest and press conference outside a new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention facility located in Newark known as Delaney Hall.He was arrested by homeland security agents and taken into custody at a separate facility in Newark. The mayor was released about five hours later and charged with trespassing.Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told CNN Saturday morning that “there will be more arrests coming” after the protest at the facility, saying that the arrests of the three Democratic members of Congress who were there – Bonnie Watson Coleman, Rob Menendez and LaMonica McIver – are “on the table”.McLoughlin told CNN that the lawmakers “put law enforcement at risk, this actually put the detainees as well at risk” and said that DHS have “body-camera footage of some of these members of Congress assaulting our Ice enforcement officers”.Newark sued Geo Group after the company won a 15-year $1bn contract with Ice to run Delaney Hall, saying that the company was renovating the facility without proper permits and that city inspectors had been barred from entering the center.Federal officials and representatives from Geo Group denied the allegations and told the New York Times that the company had the proper permits, saying that Baraka’s arrest was a “publicity stunt by the mayor”, who is also running in the state’s gubernatorial race.“The mayor has been informed that he is more than welcome to enter the facility, as long as he follows security protocols like everyone else,” McLoughlin told the Times.At the protest Tuesday, Baraka joined Coleman, Menendez and McIver, who were allowed into the facility as part of an oversight visit.In a video reviewed by the New York Times, a homeland security agent told Baraka he could not enter the facility like the Congress members, or he would be arrested.Baraka, who was in a crowd of people, told Sharpton that he left the entry gates “several times”, and he was ultimately arrested outside the facility gates. Baraka insists that he “didn’t do anything wrong”.Baraka told Sharpton that DHS was “treating us just like a regular case”.“I was put in the cell, I was given a mug shot, fingerprinted, charged with a federal crime of trespassing,” Baraka said, adding that the police were “treating [him] pretty good”.Baraka emphasized that the federal government wasn’t sharing information about who was being kept in the detention facility.“We don’t know what’s going on in there, we don’t know who’s in there. They don’t allow inspectors. They’re not complying with local laws,” Baraka said. “They feel like they don’t have to go to court.” More