On Monday’s broadcast of ABC’s “GMA3,” Newark Mayor Ras Baraka stated that ICE is engaging in “this witch hunt for people who they say may be murderers or rapists or criminals. I don’t know how you determine a criminal simply by looking at them or somebody that’s undocumented simply by looking at them, particularly in a place like Newark, New Jersey, where there’s high levels of diversity, of people from different parts of the world here.”
Baraka stated, “Well, so three undocumented folks were detained, taken away by [ICE]. But there [was] a whole store full of other folks who were in there who were held in the store unlawfully, [whose] IDs were checked, a military veteran who was there, who they made mockery of his ID, trying to make him believe that it was fake. They took these people through the motions, and they should not have. And, to me, that is a violation of these people’s constitutional rights for sure. For them to say that citizens will be collateral damage is for us to say that the Constitution should be collateral damage.”
He continued, “We cannot allow people’s rights to be violated in this witch hunt for people who they say may be murderers or rapists or criminals. I don’t know how you determine a criminal simply by looking at them or somebody that’s undocumented simply by looking at them, particularly in a place like Newark, New Jersey, where there’s high levels of diversity, of people from different parts of the world here. In the city of Newark, it’s difficult to determine who’s undocumented and who’s not.”
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