Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) has introduced a resolution that would expel the disgraced New Jersey Democrat who was arrested for assaulting ICE.
The resolution sends a message that no one is above the law, Mace says, in the wake of Rep. LaMonica McIver's (D-NJ) involvement in a shameful scene outside a detention center in Newark.
The Democrat was one of a trio of House members who stormed an ICE facility earlier this month.
Of course, McIver has denied any responsibility, pointing the finger at federal agents instead, but she is on camera throwing elbows.
"You know, it’s ridiculous. I was there to do my job along with my other colleagues. We have done this before. This is our obligation to do. It’s in our job d1escription to have oversight over facility. The entire situation was escalated by ICE. They caused the confrontation. Homeland came and caused this chaos that we see. It was a very tense situation," she told CNN.
With Congress being so narrowly divided in numbers, Mace's resolution has little chance of getting the two-thirds vote needed to pass. Democrats have circled the wagons around McIver, decrying her arrest as an act of political retaliation.
Republicans, of course, responded quite differently when one of their own House members was caught behaving unethically. New York Republican George Santos was expelled from Congress with significant help from his own party after a House Ethics probe into his fraudulent schemes. A judge recently sentenced him to over seven years in prison.
Indeed, Mace has pointed to Santos as a precedent for expelling a lawmaker who has been charged, but not yet convicted of a crime.
But Democrats are as thick as thieves, and they only turn on their members when they become detrimental to the party and its aims (see Joe Biden as an example.)
Democrats, apparently, have decided that McIver's role in an embarrassing piece of political theater -- one that highlights their own unpopular extremism on immigration -- does not warrant her losing support.
While no one disputes that lawmakers have an oversight function, which the congresswoman claims to have been executing in Newark, they do not have a right to assault people, as Mace pointed out. This may come as a shock to McIver and her sympathizers.
McIver has been charged with two counts of assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers. She faces up to eight years in prison on each.
"No one is above the law -- not even you, LaMonica. This was a disgraceful abuse of power. She has no business serving in Congress,” Mace concluded.
