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Newark Mayor and Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Ras Baraka filed a lawsuit Tuesday against interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba, accusing her of false arrest and malicious prosecution in connection with his May 9 arrest and charges outside a federal immigration center.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in New Jersey, accuses Habba of acting politically in Baraka’s May 9 arrest outside the Delaney Hall detention center, near Newark Liberty International Airport. Baraka was arrested during a protest outside the facility, after being accused of trespassing and ignoring warnings from law enforcement officials to leave. He was held in custody for several hours before being released. The U.S. attorney’s office said 13 days after it brought charges against Baraka that it was dismissing the case “for the sake of moving forward.”
The civil lawsuit filed by Baraka’s attorneys seeks damages for what they described as his “false arrest and malicious prosecution,” as well as the allegedly defamatory remarks Habba made about his case, including on social media. The lawsuit includes screenshots of Habba’s social media posts in question.
Speaking at a press conference Tuesday afternoon, Bakara’s attorney, Nancy Erika Smith, detailed the alleged defamation – noting that before Baraka had even been transferred off the property at Delaney Hall or charged, Habba “started tweeting from her personal X account that the mayor had ‘committed a crime,’ which is defamation per se.”
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“Habba said in her tweet no one is above the law,” Smith continued. “I don’t agree with Alina Habba about much, but I agree with that.
“And today she’s finding out that even she is not above the law.”
Baraka, an outspoken opponent of Trump’s immigration policies, was briefly charged with criminal trespassing last month outside Delaney Hall, a 1,000-bed facility near Newark, New Jersey. He was one of several public officials, including Reps. Robert Menendez, LaMonica McIver and Bonnie Watson Coleman, from the New Jersey congressional delegation, all of whom had massed outside the facility in protest.
Habba claimed he “ignored multiple warnings” from officials to remove himself from the privately owned ICE detention center – a contention Baraka disputed.
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“After they finally told us to leave, and I told them I was leaving, they came outside the gate and arrested me,” he previously said in an interview on MSNBC. “So it looked like it was targeted.”
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In the lawsuit, Baraka’s lawyers accused Habba of acting as “a political operative, outside of any function intimately related to the judicial process, and in her individual personal capacity.”
It also accuses her of green-lighting the arrest despite “clear evidence that Mayor Baraka had not committed the petty offense of ‘defiant trespass.’” Also named as a defendant in the case is Ricky Patel, a DHS Investigations agent in charge in Newark.
The news comes as Baraka, a prominent progressive figure, continues his gubernatorial campaign ahead of the June 10 Democratic primary, in a bid to replace outgoing Gov. Phil Murphy, who is approaching the end of his two-term limit.
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