Newark Mayor Ras Baraka is running for governor — not that his fellow New Jerseyans are aware of his ambitions. The latest survey of the Garden State’s Democratic primary voters found him huddled up in the rear of a crowded pack of gubernatorial aspirants. Baraka needed to stir up some publicity for himself. At the beginning of May, he thought he had found a cause that would do just that: a federal courthouse’s detention center in which the Trump administration was warehousing illegal migrants eligible for deportation.
For several days, activists, progressive lawmakers, and the mayor made spectacles of themselves outside that facility. Baraka “vowed to return each day until city officials were allowed inside to reinspect the facility,” the New York Times reported on May 6. “We want them to follow our rules, follow our laws,” he said after city officials targeted the detention facility’s private owners with citations for building-code violations. But protesting the facility was not enough. Baraka vowed that he would gain access to the premises so he could scan for additional threats to health and fire safety. “They’re keeping us out through the gates and the fences and all this other kind of stuff,” Baraka insisted. “But we’re going to come down here every day, and we’re going to get in one way or the other.”
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