A federal grand jury indicted Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) in connection to last month’s scuffle outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in Newark, New Jersey, interim U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Alina Habba announced on Tuesday.

In a post on X, Habba revealed that the three-count indictment charges McIver with “forcibly impeding and interfering with federal law enforcement officers.”

McIver said she will be entering a plea of not guilty.

“The facts of this case will prove I was simply doing my job and will expose these proceedings for what they are: a brazen attempt at political intimidation,” McIver said in a statement. “This indictment is not more justified than the original charges, and is an effort by Trump’s administration to dodge accountability for the chaos ICE caused and scare me out of doing the work I was elected to do. But it won’t work — I will not be intimidated.”

On May 9, McIver and other Democrats from New Jersey demanded they be allowed to conduct “oversight” of the ICE detention facility at Delaney Hall. A confrontation between them and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents ensued, as shown in ICE body-cam footage.

According to a Department of Justice press release, the indictment says McIver forcibly impeded and interfered with federal officers amid their efforts to arrest the mayor of Newark, who had entered a secured area.

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“Someone in the crowd yelled ‘circle the mayor,'” the DOJ said. “McIver then faced the Mayor and placed her arms around him in an effort to prevent HSI from completing the arrest. During her continued attempts to thwart the arrest, McIver slammed her forearm into the body of one law enforcement officer and also reached out and tried to restrain that officer by forcibly grabbing him. McIver also used each of her forearms to forcibly strike a second officer.”

McIver, initially charged a few weeks ago, faces up to 17 years in prison if convicted.

“As I have stated in the past, it is my Constitutional obligation as the Chief Federal Law Enforcement Officer for New Jersey to ensure that our federal partners are protected when executing their duties,” Habba declared in her post on X. “While people are free to express their views for or against particular policies, they must not do so in a manner that endangers law enforcement and the communities those officers serve.”

Habba added: “Today’s decision by the grand jury is the next step in a process that my Office will pursue to a just end.”

CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten said Tuesday that foreign-born voters in the United States have swung toward the Republican Party on immigration by 40 points since 2020.

Immigrant voters have swung harder to the Right than any other demographic, Enten said. The transformation has come side-by-side with large gains by President Donald Trump among immigrant voters, as well.

“Foreign-born voters have gone tremendously to the Right on this issue in 2024 and 2025 versus where they were in 2020,” said Enten. “You go back to 2020, Democrats, get this, held a 32-point lead on this issue. Immigrant voters were in the Democratic camp. Jump forward to 2024, 2025. Look at that shift. A 40-point shift to the Right among immigrant voters.”

“Republicans now lead on this issue by eight points over Democrats, more so than any other group that I could find,” he added.

No group has become more hawkish on immigration & shifted to the GOP than immigrants.

Immigrant voters
-Trust more on immigration in 2020: Dem +32 pt to Now: GOP +8 pt
-Net fav of immigrants here illegally: +23 pt in '20, -6 pt in '24
-Trump's vote: 36% in '16 to 47% in '24! pic.twitter.com/YebaSvfL7D

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) June 10, 2025

Since 2016, Trump’s signature issue has been immigration, and he appears to have benefitted politically from immigrants’ views swinging hard to the Right on the issue. Among immigrants who are registered to vote in the United States, Trump has gained 11 points in support since his first presidential campaign.

“Look at this, 2016, he got 36 percent of the vote. You go to 2020, 39 percent of the vote. Look at this, in 2024, all the way up to 47 percent of the vote,” said Enten. “Some polls I looked at had him barely losing that vote. Some polls I looked at had him barely winning that vote. Again, there is no bloc of voters that shifted more to the Right from 2020 to 2024 than immigrant voters.”

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Immigrant voters have also soured in their views on illegal immigrants. In 2020, foreign-born voters had a 23-point positive view of illegal immigrants. In 2024, the consensus flipped to become a 6-point negative view of illegal immigrants, according to Enten.

Enten’s analysis of the legal immigrants’ views on immigration comes as Trump has responded forcefully to anti-immigration enforcement riots in the Los Angeles area. After days of unrest over federal immigration operations, the president ordered 2,000 National Guard troops into Los Angeles on Sunday, followed by more guardsmen and Marines on Monday.

Rioters and demonstrators have attacked law enforcement, burned vehicles, and written threatening messages to federal immigration agents in recent days as the Trump administration has stepped up deportation operations in the Los Angeles area.

Democrats in California have fought Trump on the immigration operations. Governor Gavin Newsom backed a state lawsuit against the administration on Monday claiming that Trump’s orders sending in the military to quell the riots and protect law enforcement violated the law.