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Federal prosecutors alleged Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver of New Jersey pushed and grabbed officers while attempting to block the arrest of the Newark, N.J., mayor outside an immigration detention facility, according to charges in court papers unsealed on Tuesday.

In an eight-page complaint, interim U.S. Atty. Alina Habba’s office said McIver was protesting the removal of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka from a congressional tour of the Delaney Hall detention center in Newark on May 9.

The complaint says she attempted to stop the arrest of the mayor and pushed into agents for Homeland Security Investigations and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She faces two counts of assaulting, resisting and impeding an officer.

McIver has denied any wrongdoing and has accused federal agents of escalating the situation by arresting the mayor. She denounced the charge as “purely political” and said prosecutors are distorting her actions in an effort to deter legislative oversight.

Habba had charged Baraka with trespassing after his arrest but dismissed the allegation on Monday when she said in a social media post that she instead was charging the congresswoman.

Prosecuting McIver is a rare federal criminal case against a sitting member of Congress for allegations other than fraud or corruption.

The case instantly taps into a broader and more consequential struggle between a Trump administration engaged in overhauling immigration policy and a Democratic Party scrambling to respond.

Within minutes of Habba’s announcement, McIver’s Democratic colleagues cast the prosecution as an infringement on lawmakers’ official duties to serve their constituents and an effort to silence their opposition to an immigration policy that helped propel the president back into power but now has emerged as a divisive fault line in American political discourse.

Members of Congress are authorized by law to go into federal immigration facilities as part of their oversight powers, even without advance notice. Congress passed a 2019 appropriations bill that spelled out the authority.

A nearly two-minute clip released by the Homeland Security Department shows McIver on the facility side of a chain-link fence just before the arrest of the mayor on the street side of the fence. She and uniformed officials go through the gate and she joins others shouting they should circle the mayor. The video shows McIver in a tightly packed group of people and officers. At one point, her left elbow and then her right elbow push into an officer wearing a dark face covering and an olive green uniform emblazoned with the word “Police” on it.

It isn’t clear from body camera video whether that contact was intentional, incidental or a result of jostling in the chaotic scene.

The complaint says she “slammed” her forearm into an agent and then tried to restrain the agent by grabbing him.

Tom Homan, President Trump’s top border advisor, said during an interview on Fox News on Tuesday that “she broke the law and we’re going to hold her accountable.”

“You can’t put hands on an ICE employee,” he said. “We’re not going to tolerate it.”

McIver, 38, first came to Congress in September in a special election after the death of Rep. Donald Payne Jr. left a vacancy in the 10th District. She was then elected to a full term in November. A Newark native, she served as the president of the Newark City Council from 2022 to 2024 and worked in the city’s public schools before that.

House Democratic leaders decried the criminal case against their colleague in a lengthy statement in which they called the charge “extreme, morally bankrupt” and lacking “any basis in law or fact.”

Catalini, Richer and Tucker write for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has agreed to pay just under $5 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit that Ashli Babbitt’s family filed over her shooting by an officer during the U.S. Capitol riot, according to a person with knowledge of the settlement. The person insisted on anonymity to discuss with the Associated Press terms of a settlement that have not been made public.

The settlement would resolve the $30-million federal lawsuit that Babbitt’s estate filed last year in Washington, D.C. On Jan. 6, 2021, a Capitol police officer shot Babbitt as she tried to climb through the broken window of a barricaded door leading to the Speaker’s Lobby.

The officer who shot her was cleared of wrongdoing by the U.S. Attorney’s office for the District of Columbia, which concluded that he acted in self-defense and in the defense of members of Congress. The Capitol Police also cleared the officer.

Settlement terms haven’t been disclosed in public court filings. On May 2, lawyers for Babbitt’s estate and the Justice Department told a federal judge that they had reached a settlement in principle but were still working out the details before a final agreement could be signed.

Justice Department spokespeople and two attorneys for the Babbitt family didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

Babbitt, a 35-year-old Air Force veteran from San Diego, was unarmed when she was shot by the officer. The lawsuit alleges that the plainclothes officer failed to de-escalate the situation and did not give her any warnings or commands before opening fire.

The suit also accused the Capitol Police of negligence, claiming the department should have known that the officer was “prone to behave in a dangerous or otherwise incompetent manner.”

“Ashli posed no threat to the safety of anyone,” the lawsuit said.

The officer said in a televised interview that he fired as a “last resort.” He said he didn’t know if the person jumping through the window was armed when he pulled the trigger.

Thousands of people stormed the Capitol after President Trump spoke to a crowd of supporters at his Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally near the White House. More than 100 police officers were injured in the attack.

In January, on his first day back in the White House, Trump pardoned, commuted the prison sentences or ordered the dismissal of charges for all of the more than 1,500 people charged with crimes in the riot.

Tucker and Kunzelman write for the Associated Press. AP writer Alanna Durkin Richer contributed to this report.

A Los Angeles construction worker from Vietnam was among 13 immigrants roused by guards in full combat gear around 2:30 a.m. one day last week in a Texas detention facility, shackled, forced onto a bus and told they would be deported to Libya, two of the detainees’ lawyers said.

“It was very aggressive. They weren’t allowed to do anything,” said Tin Thanh Nguyen, an attorney for the Los Angeles man, whom he did not identify for fear of retaliation.

Libya, the politically unstable country in North Africa, is beset by “terrorism, unexploded landmines, civil unrest, kidnapping, and armed conflict,” according to the U.S. State Department. Human rights groups have documented inhumane conditions at detention facilities and migrant camps, including torture, forced labor and rape.

The construction worker, who has a criminal conviction on his record, had lived in the U.S. for decades and has a wife and teenage daughter. He was arrested after appearing at an annual immigration check-in at a Los Angeles office two months ago and then shuffled around to various detention facilities before arriving at the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall.

In the early morning hours of May 7, he was placed on the bus from the detention facility south to what was likely Lackland Air Force Base. From there, he and the rest of the group sat for hours on the tarmac in front of a military plane in the predawn dark, unsure what was going to happen. The men hailed from Laos, Vietnam, Myanmar, Mali, Burundi, Cuba, Bolivia, Mexico and the Philippines, the attorneys said. None were from Libya.

“My client and the other men on the bus were silent,” Nguyen said in court files. “My client was extremely scared.”

The plane hatch was open. Military personnel bustled in and out, appearing to bring in supplies and fuel the plane. Photographers positioned themselves in front of the military aircraft.

“Suddenly the bus starts moving and heading back to the detention facility,” said Johnny Sinodis, an attorney for another detainee, a Filipino who grew up and went to college in the United States and also had a criminal conviction.

U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy in Massachusetts had issued a warning to the administration to halt any immediate removal to Libya or any other third country, as it would violate a previous court order that officials must provide detainees with due process and notice in their own language. Lawyers had scrambled to get the order after media reports confirmed what their clients had told them: Removals to Libya appeared imminent.

Sinodis said his client and others were returned to the detention unit and placed in solitary confinement for 24 hours.

In his declaration, he said his client spoke to a Mexican and a Bolivian national who were in the group. Each had been told that their home countries would accept them, but the officials still said they were going to send them to Libya.

It’s been a week since the incident, and the lawyers said they are still fighting to stop their clients deportations to a third country.

The Trump administration deported hundreds of mostly Venezuelan men to a prison in El Salvador, invoking a wartime law to speedily remove accused gang members. Their deportation drew immediate challenges and became the most contentious piece of the immigration crackdown. Officials have also sent people to Panama who were not from that country.

This month, the foreign minister of Rwanda said in a televison interview it was in talks with U.S. officials to take in deported migrants.

It’s unclear how Libya came to be a possible destination for the immigrants. Two governments claim power in the nation. The Tripoli-based Government of National Unity has denied any deal with the Trump administration. The Government of National Stability, based in Benghazi, also rejected reports that it would take deportees.

The U.N. Human Rights Office said on Tuesday that it had information that at least 100 Venezuelans held in the Salvadoran megaprison weren’t told they were going to be deported to a third country, had no access to a lawyer and were unable to challenge the removal.

“This situation raises serious concerns regarding a wide array of rights that are fundamental to both U.S. and international law,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in a statement. “The manner in which some of the individuals were detained and deported — including the use of shackles on them — as well as the demeaning rhetoric used against migrants, has also been profoundly disturbing.”

Sinodis said his client had already been in custody for months and been told that he would be deported to the Philippines in late April. But that month, he was transferred from the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Wash., to Texas. An officer in Tacoma told him the decision to move him there came from “headquarters,” according to court documents.

On May 5, he was scheduled to be interviewed by two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Texas. He expected to learn of his deportation date. Instead, they handed him a one-page document that said he would be deported to Libya. He was shocked, Sinodis said.

The man asked the officers whether there was anything he or his attorney could do to avoid this. They said no.

Nguyen said his client, who doesn’t speak English fluently, had a similar experience on the same day. The officers handed him a document in English that they said would allow him to be free in Libya. He doesn’t even know where Libya is and refused to sign the document. The officers told him he would be deported no matter what he did.

The next day, Sinodis said, his client’s commissary and phone accounts were zeroed out.

Sinodis finally reached an officer at the detention center who told him, “That’s crazy,” when asked about Libya. His client must have misheard, he said. But his client, who grew up on the West Coast, speaks fluent English.

Then on May 7, as things unfolded, the attorney reached another officer at the facility, who said he had no information that the man was going to Libya, and referred him back to an officer in Tacoma. A supervisor downplayed the situation.

“I can assure you this is not an emergency because the emergency does not exist,” the supervisor told him, according to court documents.

Shortly after noon that day, a detention center officer who identified himself as Garza called and told him he was looking into it, but so far had “no explanation” for why his client was told this, but he also couldn’t guarantee it didn’t happen.

Less than an hour later, his client called to tell him that he had been taken to an air base. He said when he was pulled out of his cell in the early morning, he saw the same two officers that interviewed him and asked him to sign the removal papers.

“He asks the officers, ‘Are we still going to Libya?” Sinodis said. “They said yes.”

In police circles, it’s known as the “LAPD lottery.”

Speaking at a city budget presentation this month, Police Chief Jim McDonnell said some officers have sought to “weaponize” the department’s disciplinary system to settle grievances, leaving city taxpayers on the hook for the legal bills.

Los Angeles has paid out at least $68.5 million over the last five years to resolve lawsuits filed by officers who claimed to be the victim of sexual harassment, racial discrimination or retaliation against whistleblowers, according to a Times analysis of payout data released by the city attorney’s office.

Skeptics inside the Los Angeles Police Department write off the claims as opportunistic officers trying to hit the jackpot, twisting paper trails created by the department’s much-maligned internal discipline system into the basis for lawsuits.

But the officers who sue and their labor attorneys argue the department’s continued failure to thoroughly investigate complaints or fix systemic issues leaves no other recourse.

Several recent civil trials have resulted in settlements or jury awards in the seven figures or more, including $11.5 million to a former K-9 officer who alleged colleagues spread false rumors about him and mocked his Samoan heritage. Dozens of other suits remain pending, likely leaving the city staring down more substantial payouts in the coming years.

The question of how to deal with the suits has emerged as one of the most pressing issues since McDonnell’s tenure as chief began in November. Mayor Karen Bass has said the city’s $1-billion budget deficit is at least partly driven by expensive legal payouts, as well as emergency response costs related to the Palisades fire and “downward national economic trends.”

Last year, the LAPD’s private fundraising arm gave $240,000 to hire an outside consultant to help the department analyze “the results of litigation to see if there are lessons to be learned from that.”

The consultant, Arif Alikhan, the department’s former director of constitutional policing, said he and his team are seeking to identify trends of risky behavior, improve tracking of problem employees and hold supervisors accountable for not addressing conduct that exposes the department to liability.

Part of the challenge, he said, is that cases take years to resolve, leading to lag time in awareness. “Then it kind of bubbles up and becomes a bigger issue and then you have multiple people suing.”

The city attorney’s office, which is responsible for defending the department against lawsuits, said in response to questions from The Times that cases are settled when “there could be a jury finding of liability, and when we can reach an agreement for a reasonable amount of money.”

“We will always do what is in the best interests of the city and continue to aggressively defend lawsuits—especially when plaintiffs’ attorneys try to make a fortune off of the City with unreasonable non-economic damages claims,” the city attorney’s office said in a statement. “Our office will aggressively defend against lawsuits that lack merit, as well as lawsuits in which the plaintiff’s attorney is making unreasonable demands for taxpayer dollars to resolve a case.”

The LAPD has long wrestled with costly litigation, and many claims by aggrieved officers are dismissed. But according to the data released to The Times, payouts for officer-driven lawsuits have increased recently: At least 13 verdicts or settlements worth $1 million or more have come since 2019, including nine in the last three years.

Beyond the cost to taxpayers, the public airing of workplace disputes can prove embarrassing to a department that has long fancied itself a spit-and-polish institution.

Take the Transit Services Division, where years of troubles and finger-pointing have led to a snarl of more than half a dozen lawsuits.

A former detective, Heather Rolland, received a $949,000 payout after she accused male colleagues of disparaging her for being injured on the job and of fostering a hostile work environment for women who worked in the division, which holds a lucrative contract with the county Metropolitan Transportation Authority to provide security on bus and train lines.

Among the male officials mentioned in her lawsuit is Randy Rangel, a former Transit Services sergeant, who filed his own claim against the city alleging he was retaliated against after reporting another officer for abusing his overtime pay. Last month, an L.A. County jury awarded him $4.5 million, which may still be challenged on appeal.

One of the witnesses who testified on Rangel’s behalf was his former captain, Brian Pratt, who also has a pending suit against the city. Pratt contends he was targeted with an anonymous personnel complaint after accusing a deputy chief of inappropriately using division staff to do nontransit work — a claim the city has denied in court filings.

The cycle of litigation continued with an internal affairs detective assigned to investigate Pratt. The detective alleged in a whistleblower claim that his bosses demanded unfavorable findings despite no evidence of wrongdoing. The lawsuit by Det. Hamilton Alvarenga also remains pending, with the city disputing his allegations.

Yet another Transit Services supervisor, Ashraf “Andy” Hanna, is pursuing legal action over what he alleged is a culture of anti-Arab discrimination. Hanna is also named as a defendant in several lawsuits, with co-workers accusing him of workplace hostility, which he disputes. One of his accusers, an officer named Natalie Bustamante, recently settled her sexual harassment lawsuit with the city for an undisclosed sum.

LAPD officers are supposed to report wrongdoing — or attempts to cover it up — to their supervisors, internal affairs or the Office of the Inspector General, which can investigate and potentially refer cases of misconduct to the chief for discipline. Those complaints are sealed from the public under state law, but the plaintiffs in several recent civil lawsuits alleged that the internal investigations tended to drag on unnecessarily and rarely led to punishment for the accused.

Attorney Matthew McNicholas, who has represented scores of officers in civil lawsuits, said he thinks that the growing payouts are a reflection of the city attorney’s hardball approach to civil litigation. This tough stance is costing taxpayers money by insisting on fighting cases even when it was clear they would lose in court, he said.

He pointed to the cases of Lou and Stacey Vince, a police couple who filed separate lawsuits against the department for retaliation and discrimination they faced while working in the San Fernando Valley. Lou Vince had alleged mistreatment after he returned from a work injury. In her claim, Stacey Vince said that after speaking up in her husband’s defense, she was denied a promotion and moved into a cramped office underneath the gym floor at the Police Academy with no furniture or Wi-Fi.

The couple, represented by McNicholas, received nearly $11 million in combined payouts.

“We tried to settle them both for low seven figures,” he said.

Joanna Schwartz, a UCLA law professor, said risk managers in L.A. and other cities should be looking for “policy changes or adjustments to staffing” after getting sued repeatedly.

“Best practices include internally investigating all allegations brought in lawsuits and then reviewing all the information that comes out during the course of discovery and trial,” Schwartz said.

The issue is not unique to the LAPD: Los Angeles County spent $150 million last year alone to defend the Sheriff’s Department from a slew of legal claims. And employment-related awards are only a fraction of the $358.8 million paid out in all LAPD lawsuits since 2019, including for traffic accidents, crackdowns on protesters and a botched fireworks detonation that leveled several city blocks and left dozens of residents displaced.

But the department’s handling of workplace complaints has drawn criticism on multiple fronts, including from the Los Angeles Police Protective League.

The union for rank-and-file officers, which sometimes helps members bring lawsuits, has cited the large verdicts as a sign senior LAPD officials are turning a blind eye to injustices in the workplace.

Last week, Jamie McBride, an outspoken union board member, filed a lawsuit in which he accused an assistant police chief of unfairly reprimanding him for speaking out about the LAPD’s grooming policy, the rules for how officers can keep their hair and mustaches.

McBride said in his suit that his remarks came during a union meeting in August 2023, when someone in the audience asked whether the department intended to change its rules to allow beards without a medical exemption, which is commonly granted to Black officers with skin conditions that make shaving painful.

McBride said he replied, “Well, I hope not ‘cause I think it looks like s—.”

He learned, according to his lawsuit, that that the department opened an investigation for what it deemed “racially discriminatory comments.”

McBride’s suit argues that his statement — “however controversial” — was made in the “context of protected union activity.”

The city has not yet filed a response in court to McBride’s claim. He didn’t respond to a message seeking comment.

McBride, who previously received $1.5 million after suing over alleged retaliation by his LAPD supervisors, is part of an internal work group looking at potential changes to the discipline system, along with Deputy Chief Michael Rimkunas, who runs the department’s professional standards bureau.

Rimkunas defended the department’s “thorough and comprehensive process” for addressing officer complaints, but said he is also pushing for “additional safeguards to be certain the complaint system is properly used.”

He said internal investigators are being more judicious about screening complaints before starting a formal inquiry. Cases involving apparent personality conflicts between employees are referred back to their supervisors for mediation “within weeks, even when the behavior may not have reached the level of misconduct,” he said.

It used to take up to a year, Rimkunas said, to “reach a point for potential intervention.”

Los Angeles County prosecutors filed criminal charges Tuesday against Jillian Lauren Shriner, a bestselling author who is married to Weezer bassist Scott Shriner, following an incident last month where she was wounded by police after allegedly shooting at them from her backyard.

The author, who publishes under the last name Lauren, appeared in a downtown Los Angeles courthouse, pleading not guilty to felony charges for willful discharge of a firearm in a gross negligent manner and assault of a person with a semiautomatic firearm. Prosecutors are also seeking a firearms sentencing enhancement. She faces up to 19 years in state prison if convicted on counts.

Lauren, 51, sported an all-white suit as she stood before the judge to enter her plea. She and her lawyers, Hilary Potashner and Kim Wilkinson, declined to comment after the hearing.

Lauren was initially booked April 9 on suspicion of attempted murder after a bewildering encounter with the LAPD. That afternoon, officers were searching for three hit-and-run suspects following a crash on the 134 Freeway. According to 911 calls from the area, the suspects were attempting to hide in neighborhood backyards around Eagle Rock.

The pursuit led officers to Lauren’s property, where a confrontation ensued as she stood in her backyard armed with a handgun.

Police body cameras and home surveillance videos appeared to show Lauren raising her gun and pointing it at a fence where officers had taken cover. Police said she refused their commands to drop the weapon and fired at them. The police said they shot back, hitting Lauren in the arm.

She fled back into her home, where she remained for about an hour before she was hospitalized and later taken into custody by the Highway Patrol.

There are some indications Lauren may have been unable to hear the officers due to a police helicopter hovering above the scene, possibly mistaking them for the hit-and-run suspects. In a video released by the LAPD, a neighbor could be heard telling a 911 dispatcher Lauren was confused about what happened: “There were three men, and one of them shot her, and the cops are looking for him right now … They have their guns out.”

The New Jersey native has been named a New York Times Bestselling Author for her books, “Everything You Ever Wanted” and “Some Girls: My Life in a Harem” where she recounts her encounters with Prince Jefri Bolkiah of Brunei. Most recently, she published “Behold the Monster: Facing America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer,” a look inside the mind of serial killer Samuel Little. She and Shriner have been married since 2005 and they have two sons together.

Lauren’s preliminary hearing to determine whether the cases against her will move forward is scheduled for June 18.