LaMonica McIver

U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver, D-10th Dist., who faces up to 17 years in federal prison over a clash with agents at an ICE detention center, announced Thursday that she gave birth to a healthy baby girl.

“She’s here! We just welcomed our beautiful baby girl and words can’t describe how blessed my family feels,” McIver wrote on social media. “Being a mom is one of the greatest joys of my life, and I’m beyond grateful.”

In a statement from her office, McIver said the birth was “a reminder not only of why we fight for maternal healthcare and reproductive rights, but of why we fight for the rights and freedoms of our most vulnerable– they are someone’s babies too.”

The birth comes as McIver is still fighting federal charges over her conduct at an ICE detention center.

McIver was charged after a May 9, 2025, oversight visit to Delaney Hall, the privately run immigration detention center in Newark, ended in a confrontation with federal agents as they moved to arrest Newark Mayor Ras Baraka.

Reps. Rob Menendez and Bonnie Watson Coleman were also present that day, but only McIver was charged. Baraka was arrested for trespassing, and those charges were later dropped.

Prosecutors say McIver slammed her forearm into a Homeland Security Investigations official as officers moved to arrest Baraka, and later pushed past and struck an ICE officer while trying to get back into the facility. Those two counts are felonies. A third count, a misdemeanor, broadly covers her alleged efforts to hinder Baraka’s arrest.

McIver has pleaded not guilty, turned down a plea deal and said the Trump administration is targeting her for doing her job.

In August, a split Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled that two of the three counts could move forward, finding that her alleged physical contact with agents was not “integral” to her congressional inspection of Delaney Hall. The court sent the third count back to U.S. District Judge Jamel K. Semper to decide whether it includes conduct protected as part of congressional oversight.

“This is not over,” McIver said after that ruling.

Throughout the legal ordeal, McIver has been navigating a deeply personal journey as well.

The pregnancy, which she announced in May, came after nearly a decade of fertility struggles.

In an Elle essay published last month, McIver, 40, wrote that she has had four surgeries for uterine fibroids. One of those surgeries damaged her fallopian tubes, leaving in vitro fertilization (IVF) as her only path to pregnancy. An embryo transfer in 2022 failed.

She became pregnant this year using what she called her last embryo.She wrote that, despite the case, having another child was “one thing I didn’t want to have consumed by my career or this administration.”

McIver has been open about her health. In November 2025, she had surgery to remove fibroids and then took a train to Washington that afternoon to vote against the bill to end the government shutdown.

She also has a 10-year-old daughter. Her office said she was the 15th member of Congress to give birth while in office.

McIver will not receive paid maternity leave, her office said, and she supports letting new parents in Congress vote by proxy. She plans to take October off and return to voting in November.