In a response that is more or less exactly what one would expect of Democrat lawmakers caught on tape assaulting ICE and Homeland Security agents while storming a New Jersey-based detention and deportation facility for illegal aliens, the three lawmakers have both justified their attacks on the agents and insisted that the video of their doing so is unclear.
As background, the incident occurred on Friday, May 9, when Newark, NJ, Mayor Ras Baraka and Reps. LaMonica McIver, Bonnie Watson Coleman and Rob Menendez, all Democrats from New Jersey, alongside what appeared to be a gaggle of leftist agitators, tried storming the Delaney Hall detention facility in Newark, getting arrested in the process.
Now, after video footage of the assault has emerged, the three leftist members of Congress are defending their storming of the facility, doing so in an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, May 11, in which they tried to insist that they did everything right and really it was the federal agents who were at fault.
Rep. Bonnie Coleman, commenting on the incident and justifying what happened, said that it was ICE who surprised them by locking up Mayor Baraka, saying, “Chaos ensued when someone on the phone above the leaders of ICE who were with us at that facility instructed them to go out of the facility, go to the private property and lock the mayor of the largest city in the state of New Jersey up.”
Also chiming in was Rep. LaMonica McIver, who insisted to Dana Bash that she didn’t assault the agents in the way the Trump Administration claimed, despite video showing her attacking them, claiming, “I honestly do not know how to body slam anyone. There’s no video that supports me body slamming anyone.”
The third lawmaker, Rep. Menendez, chimed in too, insisting that the federal agents were at fault because they didn’t de-escalate the situation. He insisted, “There were a lot of opportunities for DHS, for ICE to de-escalate the situation. They chose not to… It’s something that should really shock all Americans.”
Watch them here:
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Responding to their claims about there having been no violence against agents and that ICE was to blame on X, Homeland Security posted the now-infamous clip of Rep. McIver attacking its agents and said, “Let’s check the tape.” Watch Rep. McIver (in the red jacket) attack the ICE agents here:
Predictably, even after being caught on video attacking federal agents, Rep. Coleman insisted the incident was merely a peaceful visit, saying, in a statement alongside other Democrats involved in the attack, “At around 1pm today, my colleagues Rep. Lamonica McIver and Rep. Rob Menendez, Jr. and I arrived at the Delaney Hall ICE detention facility in Newark to exercise our oversight authority as Members of Congress.”
She added, “Contrary to a press statement put out by DHS we did not “storm” the detention center. The author of that press release was so unfamiliar with the facts on the ground that they didn’t even correctly count the number of Representatives present. We were exercising our legal oversight function as we have done at the Elizabeth Detention Center without incident.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video