The Congresswoman Criminalized for Visiting ICE Detainees
Earlier this year, as part of a new directive aimed at increasing immigration-related arrests, “special agents in charge” of FBI offices across the country were encouraged to investigate and charge citizens and public officials if they “obstructed” immigration agents. According to a Justice Department official, the order extended to judges and immigration lawyers whose rulings or legal defense, including on behalf of their clients, ran counter to the administration’s goals. “You had never seen this before, because it was so extreme,” the official said. By the end of the year, the department had filed more than five hundred assault charges against people accused of interfering with federal law enforcement.
The suit against McIver was the first in a series of escalating attacks by the Trump administration against Democratic officials. Nine days after her indictment, federal agents handcuffed a Democratic staffer in New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler’s office, partly on the grounds that after her colleagues documented their activity, she became “confrontational.” Two weeks later, California Senator Alex Padilla was thrown to the ground by federal agents after attending a Department of Homeland Security press conference in Los Angeles. “It’s all been very intentional,” Padilla told me. “Donald Trump came with a list of political enemies he wanted to punish. The list keeps growing.” Brad Lander, then New York City Comptroller, was arrested in June for obstructing immigration agents while accompanying an immigrant to court in Lower Manhattan. In October, six people, including a Democratic candidate for a seat in the Illinois House of Representatives, were indicted on charges of “obstruction and obstruction.” ICE police during a demonstration outside Chicago. At the beginning of December, ICE agents fired pepper spray at Adelita Grijalva, a newly sworn-in Democratic congresswoman, who was protesting an immigration raid in Tucson.
Many House Democrats have purchased liability insurance to protect themselves against the possibility of being targeted by the president. “We’re panicking,” one Democrat told me. “You don’t know what’s around the next corner.” The administration claimed McIver was “aligned” with Antifa. She was “out of control” at Delaney Hall, Trump said. “The days of wokeness are over.” Press releases issued by DHS stated that she “stormed” the facility and “broke entry”; on television, a department spokesperson accused McIver of “punching” an officer. “No one else in Congress is facing what she’s facing,” said Lateefah Simon, a Democratic representative from Oakland, California. “Usually we’d say, ‘Oh, they’re just trying to scare him.’ » They are actively litigating this case. At one point, a federal judge ordered Justice Department lawyers to order administration officials to stop publicly lying about the incident. “It’s not local. ICE. It’s coming from headquarters in Washington,” the government attorney responded. “We don’t have the authority.”
“I live around the corner from this big house on the corner with all the broken windows.”
Cartoon by Matthieu Diffee
McIver’s case is expected to go to trial this year. By December, she had already racked up nearly $1 million in legal fees. Due to House rules, the expenses were taken from her campaign funds, meaning that in the months leading up to her 2026 re-election campaign, the money she raises will be spent almost exclusively on her defense. “About five percent of me regrets going there that day,” she said. “Do I want to be surrounded like this? My mother is worried to death. My husband is stressed. My nine-year-old says to me: ‘What the hell?'” But the government’s approach, she continued, was intended “to slow me down and drain me of my joy, and that’s why I’m so keen on it.”
On a windy October evening, I met McIver at his district office in Newark. The government had closed its doors a week earlier, but a hum of activity persisted. Employees called from booths decorated with Halloween decorations. McIver, thirty-nine years old, with long dark hair and a ready smile, is amiable and unguarded. She led me into a sparsely furnished conference room and offered me coffee and a snack. “I’m a mom,” she said. “We have to make sure everyone is fed.”
In May, during the week and a half between McIver’s visit to Delaney Hall and the DOJ indictment, Habba offered to grant McIver probation in exchange for an apology. “I’m like, ‘No, no, no, no,'” she told me. “I didn’t do anything wrong.” Habba, who was in sporadic contact with McIver’s lawyers, then appeared to suggest that she could have McIver arrested – to choreograph a criminal walk in front of news cameras. “They weren’t giving us any communication,” McIver said. “My husband told me: ‘Don’t go anywhere alone. » »
