By MATT BROWN and KEVIN FREKING
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House rejected a resolution to censure Rep. LaMonica McIver, D-N.J., and remove her from a committee that oversees immigration and national security as she faces federal charges stemming from a visit to an immigration detention facility.
The House voted 215-207 to table the measure, a sign that some were uncomfortable moving forward with censure while McIver’s case is still pending in the courts. A trial in her case has been scheduled for November.
Democratic lawmakers unanimously voted to table the resolution, which was sponsored by Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La. Five Republicans joined them and two others voted present. As the resolution was being read, some Democrats were incensed. “Liar,” some shouted; “Shame,” yelled one Democratic lawmaker. Many Republicans streamed out of the chamber before the vote concluded. Democrats cheered and hugged at the final tally’s reading.
“The censure attempt against me has failed. Rightfully so. It was a baseless, partisan effort to shut me up,” McIver wrote on social media after the vote. “I was not elected to play political games — I was elected to serve. I won’t back down. Not now. Not ever.”
Republicans sought to punish McIver for a confrontation with federal law enforcement during a congressional visit to a new immigration detention facility in Newark, N.J. McIver has pleaded not guilty to federal charges accusing her of assaulting and interfering with immigration officers outside the facility.
The censure resolution recounted how McIver is alleged to have interfered with Homeland Security Investigations officials’ ability to arrest an unauthorized visitor. It said she is alleged to have slammed her forearm into the body and forcibly grabbed an HSI officer. The resolution also said body camera and other video evidence supported the allegations made in the federal indictment.
The measure said such actions did not reflect credibly on the House and that her continued service on the House Homeland Security Committee was a significant conflict of interest. The committee’s portfolio includes oversight of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, which operates the detention center that McIver tried to enter.
The effort had the backing of GOP leadership. Some Republicans expressed dismay with the outcome.
“We have a member of Congress who assaulted an ICE officer. I don’t even know what we’re doing anymore,” said Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida.
Donalds said he did not know why some Republicans broke ranks to back the motion to table the censure resolution.
Democratic Rep. Yvette Clarke, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said the McIver vote was “a breath of fresh air in such a toxic environment.”
McIver won a special election last year after Democratic Rep. Donald Payne Jr. died in office. She won a full two-year term in November.
McIver was joined by two other New Jersey Democrats, Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman and Rob Menendez, during a visit to a privately owned 1,000-bed facility that ICE is using as a detention center. Newark’s mayor, Democrat Ras Baraka, was arrested after officials determined he was not authorized to enter. That charge was later dropped. Baraka is suing over what he said was a malicious prosecution.
Parts of the confrontation can be seen on a nearly two-minute video clip from the visit released by the Department of Homeland Security.
The video shows McIver on the facility side of a chain-link fence just before Baraka’s arrest on the street side of the fence, where other people had been protesting. She and uniformed officials are seen going through a fence gate, and she joins others shouting that they should circle the mayor. The video then 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 with the word “Police” on it.
McIver was indicted on three counts of assaulting, resisting, impeding and interfering with federal officials. Two of the counts carry a maximum sentence of up to eight years in prison. The third is a misdemeanor with a maximum punishment of one year in prison.
Higgins said he would not have moved forward with the resolution if McIver had withdrawn from the Homeland Security panel pending a resolution of the federal charges against her. He said it was a conflict for her to serve on a panel with oversight authority over the agencies at the center of her criminal investigation.
“We didn’t expect it to fail. We knew it would be close, but it’s quite disappointing,” Higgins said.
The House has censured members on 28 occasions before, but the punishment has increasingly been delivered on a partisan basis in recent years.
Democrats retaliated just hours before the McIver vote with the introduction of a censure resolution against Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., who has been accused by a beauty pageant titleholder of threatening to release intimate videos and private images of her after she ended their romantic relationship, according to a report filed with law enforcement. Mills has denied the allegations.
Mills is also facing an ethics investigation into whether he violated campaign finance laws or held federal contracts while in office.
Democratic efforts to put the spotlight on Mills seemed to serve as a warning to Republicans that they were prepared to undertake similar censure resolutions in response to the targeting of McIver.
“There are colleagues on the other side of the aisle that have very serious charges against them, and we don’t want to have to unpack that for the American people,” Clarke said.
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