Sophie Nieto-Muñoz, New Jersey Monitor

Courtroom No. 2B in the J. Caleb Boggs Federal Courthouse in Wilmington, Delaware, will take center stage Wednesday, with attorneys for Rep. LaMonica McIver scheduled to appear before a U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals panel there in a bid to get her federal assault charges thrown out.

The court hearing comes nearly 14 months after a confrontation outside Newark migrant jail Delaney Hall earned McIver national notoriety and landed her in the Trump administration’s crosshairs.

Federal officials have compared McIver, a first-term Democrat from Newark, to “Antifa-aligned left-wing violent extremists.” She and her allies argue she is a political target, prosecuted because she vocally opposes the Trump administration’s mass detention and deportation policies.

“They want to criminalize oversight and lock me up. Whatever they try, we’re not backing down,” McIver said during a meeting of House Democrats in Newark last week.

McIver, who is now expecting her second child, faces up to 17 years in prison.

One of her close allies is Rep. Rob Menendez, a Jersey City Democrat who was with McIver at Delaney Hall last year when the melee broke out that resulted in her assault charges.

In an interview ahead of Wednesday’s hearing, Menendez said he has major concerns about what precedent could be set in a case like McIver’s and hopes the appeals panel will toss the charges she faces.

Rep. Rob Menendez speaks outside of Delaney Hall on Dec. 23, 2025. (Photo by Anne-Marie Caruso/New Jersey Monitor)

He called the continuing legal battle a “complete abuse” of the U.S. Department of Justice that is “consistent with this administration’s abuse at every level of power.” But he said McIver remains optimistic and productive, noting her recent return visits to Delaney Hall to inspect the facility and speak to detainees housed there.

“I think she’s hopeful, she’s feeling positive. We’re all here to support her as she continues to challenge this,” he said.

A request for comment from McIver was not returned.

McIver, Menendez, and Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman were at Delaney Hall on May 9, 2025, to conduct an oversight visit shortly after private company Geo Group opened the detention center.

During the visit, federal agents arrested Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who joined the congressional delegation and was invited into a fenced area of the property by a Geo Group staffer. Baraka, a Democrat who at the time had been trying to get city health inspectors inside the jail, remained in the parking lot for about 40 minutes before being asked to leave. Agents arrested him for trespassing on his way off the property, setting off a fracas between the elected officials, protesters, and federal agents.

Body camera footage released later shows McIver shoving at least one officer during the chaotic scene.

Video footage of a May 9, 2025, confrontation between protesters and federal agents outside a migrant jail in Newark shows Rep. LaMonica McIver (in red) pushing one of the agents. (Courtesy of the Department of Homeland Security)

Ten days after that brawl, federal prosecutors announced they were dropping the trespassing charge against Baraka but hitting McIver with assault charges. A federal grand jury indicted her in June 2025.

McIver’s legal team is seeking to dismiss the charges by arguing she has legislative immunity for the acts that occurred at Delaney Hall last year — the Constitution’s speech or debate clause protects members of Congress from prosecution over legislative acts — and by claiming she is the victim of selective and vindictive prosecution. Prosecutors argue that her actions during the fight that broke out during Baraka’s arrest were not legislative acts, and that the speech or debate clause “doesn’t immunize Members of Congress who engage in violent or forcefully obstructive acts, full stop.”

McIver’s attorneys attempted to have the federal judge overseeing her case toss the charges, but he rejected her argument that she is shielded by legislative immunity and found that her alleged criminal conduct “did not occur during Defendant’s inspection of Delaney Hall,” setting up her appeal to be heard by the 3rd Circuit panel Wednesday.

In a brief filed in the case in April, 20 former members of Congress — 17 of them Republicans — wrote that if the charges proceed, members of Congress would be deterred from carrying out their essential oversight responsibilities and “insulate executive abuses from the checks and balances the Constitution intends.”

“Thus, it is no exaggeration to say that if this prosecution is allowed to proceed, it would imperil the constitutionally mandated powers of Congress and the fabric of our constitutional order,” they wrote.

McIver has paid multiple visits to Delaney Hall since the incident that led to her assault charges, most recently last week, as the detention center has become a flashpoint in the fight against the Trump administration’s deportation effort. Detainees there recently went on a hunger and labor strike to bring attention to conditions inside, which prompted nightly protests in Newark.

Wednesday’s hearing is expected to begin at 9:30 a.m.

When Gov. Mikie Sherrill signed a trio of immigration-related bills in Newark in March, one of the bills was aimed at barring U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from covering their faces.

“We’re not going to tolerate masked, roving militias pretending to be well-trained law enforcement agents,” Sherrill, a Democrat, said then.

Yet scenes over the past 10 days of anti-ICE protesters clashing with federal agents outside migrant jail Delaney Hall have made clear the new law is not stopping ICE officers from masking.

“I don’t think they’re focused on due process,” Sherrill said at a press conference Sunday. “Certainly, they’re already breaking the law here in New Jersey by wearing masks everywhere. We’re in court to fight that right now.”

The Trump administration sued New Jersey in federal court in April over the new law, called the Law Enforcement Officer Protection Act (it bars all law enforcement from masking, not just ICE agents). Though a judge has yet to rule in the matter, Lauren Bis, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said the agency will not obey New Jersey’s “unconstitutional attempt to regulate law enforcement officers.”

“ICE officers wear face coverings for one reason: to protect themselves and their families from real-world threats including agitators. The danger is not hypothetical,” she said. “Today, our ICE law enforcement officers face a more than 1,300% increase in assaults, 3,300% increase in vehicular attacks, and an 8,000% increase in death threats against them.”

The nightly conflict between ICE agents and protesters, which started when detainees at Delaney Hall said they were launching a hunger strike to protest conditions inside, shifted in recent days when New Jersey State Police took over crowd control outside the Newark detention center and Newark city officials implemented a nightly curfew in a push to discourage demonstrators.

On Monday, Brooklyn man Nicholas Matthew Scelfo appeared before a federal judge in Newark on charges that he threatened to murder a federal agent during a Delaney Hall protest last week. Video from that night shows a man federal prosecutors identify as Scelfo screaming, “I’ll kill your whole f***ing family” at an officer.

“I have your face, mother***er! You’re dead! Dead!” the man yells in the video.

Federal authorities have used that episode to defend ICE agents for wanting to cover their faces during operations.

Scelfo faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.