May 10 (UPI) — Newark Mayor Ras Baraka said he was “targeted” when he was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at a migrant detention facility in that city.

“Nothing happened for a long, long time, you know, for at least over an hour. And then, you know, after that, they finally told us to leave, and I told him I was leaving, they came outside the gate and arrested me,” Baraka said during a TV interview with MSNBC.

“So it looked like it was targeted.”

Baraka was arrested at Delaney Hall Detention Center in Newark, after attending the facility with New Jersey Reps. Robert Menendez Jr. and Bonnie Watson Coleman.

The Department of Homeland Security later accused the two members of Congress of illegally breaking into the detention facility as part of a “bizarre political stunt.”

Watson Coleman said the officials had ” lawful oversight authority to be there.”

Baraka was later released from a DHS field office following his arrest.

The 55-year-old native of Newark is running to replace Gov. Phil Murphy, D-N.J., who is term-limited. Baraka has made several TV appearances following the arrest.

“The reality is this: I didn’t do anything wrong,” Baraka told the public following his release.

“[Baraka] was exercising my right and duty as an elected official,” the mayor told CNN.

Interim U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Alina Habba pushed back, saying federal officials were in the right.

“The Mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself from the ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey this afternoon,” Habba said on X. “He has willingly chosen to disregard the law. That will not stand in this state. He has been taken into custody. No one is above the law.”