The New Yorker:

LaMonica McIver went to tour an immigration jail in her New Jersey district. Now she faces seventeen years in prison.

By Jonathan Blitzer

On the Friday before Mother’s Day, LaMonica McIver, a first-term Democratic congresswoman from New Jersey, spent the morning handing out roses in the maternity ward of a hospital in Newark. Her next stop, a visit to Delaney Hall, a federal immigration jail in her district, promised to be a more sombre affair, but she was “on a high note,” McIver told me. “We thought it would be a smooth day.”

McIver arrived at Delaney Hall just before one o’clock. She was joining two other New Jersey Democrats—Bonnie Watson Coleman and Robert Menendez, Jr.—to tour the facility. Members of Congress are allowed by law to make unannounced visits to detention centers as part of their oversight responsibilities; the three lawmakers planned to look around inside, then hold a press conference. As they were waiting to enter, McIver needled Menendez about his plans for Mother’s Day. “What did you get your wife?” she asked him, and acted scandalized when he said he hadn’t yet bought anything. “Oh, my God,” McIver said. “You have less than forty-eight hours!”

The members knew the rules of touring immigration facilities: their staff couldn’t join them, and cellphones weren’t allowed inside. A few months earlier, when they had visited another New Jersey immigration jail, in Elizabeth, a guard wouldn’t admit them. Watson Coleman, who is eighty and in her sixth term, produced a copy of the federal statute that authorized their visit. Twenty minutes later, the warden and a representative from Immigration and Customs Enforcement showed them around. At Delaney Hall, McIver recalled, “I just thought we would go in and have a little delay.”

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