Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver is being charged with assault after a skirmish with federal officers who arrested the Newark mayor outside an immigration detention center, New Jersey's top federal prosecutor announced Monday.

Interim U.S. Attorney Alina Habba on social media announced the charge of assaulting, impeding or interfering with law enforcement, but court papers providing details were not immediately released or publicly available online. At the same time, Habba announced that her office was dismissing a misdemeanor case brought against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who was arrested after he attempted to join McIver and two other members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation inspecting the facility in their oversight capacity. Habba said the decision was reached “for the sake of moving forward" and said she has invited the mayor to tour the Delaney Hall detention center and will join him herself. “The citizens of New Jersey deserve unified leadership so we can get to work to keep our state safe,” Habba said in a statement. McIver’s attorney, Paul Fishman, the former U.S. attorney for New Jersey, issued a statement calling the decision to charge McIver “spectacularly inappropriate,” saying she went to Delaney Hall “to do her job” and she has the responsibility as a member of Congress to oversee U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's treatment of detainees. “Rather than facilitating that inspection, ICE agents chose to escalate what should have been a peaceful situation into chaos,” Fishman said. “This prosecution is an attempt to shift the blame for ICE’s behavior to Congresswoman McIver. In the courtroom, facts — not headlines — will matter.” A nearly two-minute clip released by the Homeland Security Department shows McIver on the facility side of a chain link fence just before the arrest of the mayor on the street side of the fence. She and uniformed officials go through the gate and she joins others shouting “surround the mayor.” The video shows McIver in a tightly packed group of people and officers. At one point her left elbow and then her right elbow push into an officer wearing a dark face covering and an olive green uniform emblazoned with the word “Police” on it. McIver and the two other Democrats — Bonnie Watson Coleman and Robert Menendez Jr. — have denied any wrongdoing and had accused federal agents of escalating the situation by arresting the mayor. “There’s no video that supports me body slamming anyone,” McIver said in a recent CNN interview. “We were simply there to do our job. ... It was a very tense situation. It unfortunately did not have to be like that. They created that confrontation. They created that chaos and then ultimately went to arrest the mayor.” In a post on X, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said McIver was being charged after a “thorough review of the video footage” and investigation by Homeland Security Investigations. “Assaults on federal law enforcement will not be tolerated,” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a post on X. “This Administration will always protect those who work tirelessly to keep America safe.” McIver, 38, first came to Congress in September in a special election after the death of Rep. Donald Payne Jr. left a vacancy in the 10th District. She was then elected to a full term in November. A Newark native, she served as the president of the Newark City Council from 2022 to 2024 and worked in the city’s public schools before that.