Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) on Wednesday moved to drive a vote on a decision to censure Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.), who faces expenses ensuing from a conflict with officers at an immigrant detention middle.
The measure, which spans three pages, requires McIver to be censured and faraway from the Home Homeland Safety Committee.
The transfer from Higgins got here the identical day the Home broke for a weeks-long August recess, that means the matter is not going to be handled till September. Underneath Home guidelines, management should act on the decision inside two legislative days, both staging a vote on it, motioning to refer it to committee or motioning to desk it.
It stays unclear how Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) will deal with the matter. The Home has censured 28 members in its historical past, with the most up-to-date being Rep. Al Inexperienced (D-Texas) in March after he shouted and waved his cane within the air throughout President Trump’s first joint handle to Congress of his second time period.
McIver pushed again on Higgins’s decision, calling the Louisiana Republican “a bigot who wants to be back in the news.”
“Rs just shut down the House floor early and left to avoid confronting their president’s relationship with Epstein. Now they want us to believe they’re doing something when they’re really running home to hide,” McIver wrote in a thread on X.
“This resolution aims to kick me off the committee that presides over the Department of Homeland Security and shame me for doing the oversight work that is my job. Good luck, Clay.” she added.
McIver stands accused of assaulting regulation enforcement together with her forearms throughout a chaotic conflict that ensued after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers started to arrest Newark, N.J., Mayor Ras Baraka (D) outdoors a New Jersey immigration detention facility in Might. McIver was visiting the power with a bunch of elected officers.
McIver has disputed that she assaulted anybody, and photographs of the scrum exhibits her elevating her arms as she’s jostled among the many competing factions.
The crime carries a major penalty – as a lot as 16 years in jail if McIver is convicted.
Home Homeland Safety Committee members like McIver, in addition to different Democrats, have made a degree of visiting detention services because the Trump administration seeks to extend immigration arrests after Trump promised the most important mass deportation effort in U.S. historical past.
The Division of Homeland Safety has since tried to restrict lawmaker visits, one thing Democratic members mentioned was designed to dam oversight.
Prosecutors — then led by interim U.S. Lawyer for New Jersey Alina Habba — obtained vital scrutiny for bringing expenses towards Baraka that they later dropped.
U.S. District Choose Andre Espinosa in a Wednesday listening to mentioned the arrest instructed a “worrisome misstep” by the New Jersey’s U.S. legal professional’s workplace, noting the “apparent rush” in bringing the case that culminated within the authorities’s “embarrassing” retraction of the cost.
