New Jersey Gubernatorial Hopeful Speaks at Rally Featuring CAIR Leader Who Justified Oct. 7

Newark mayor Ras Baraka also hosted notorious anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan in 2017

New Jersey gubernatorial candidate and Newark mayor Ras Baraka (D.) spoke Tuesday at an anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement rally that featured the Council on American-Islamic Relations New Jersey (CAIR NJ), an anti-Semitic group that justified the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

Rallygoers gathered outside Delaney Hall, the Trump administration’s newly commissioned illegal immigrant detention facility in Newark, to protest its June opening. Several far-left groups participated, including the New Jersey Working Families Party, Make the Road New Jersey, and CAIR NJ, which has characterized Hamas’s attack as a prison break, calling it “inevitable” and “not unexpected.”

Today we came together in front of Delaney Hall, advocates and community leaders alike, to make one thing clear: we stand with our immigrant community. We are united, and ICE is not above the law. Not in Newark & not in New Jersey. pic.twitter.com/CLMT639gWv

— Ras J. Baraka (@rasjbaraka) March 11, 2025

“When ICE came and raided the fish market in the city of Newark, they asked people for their papers under the guise of looking for criminals,” Baraka said at Tuesday’s rally. “But I have to tell them they don’t have to go too far to look for criminals. They just need to go to the Oval Office.”

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Baraka has the highest favorability among the six Democratic candidates jockeying for the governor’s mansion, according to a March 5 Fairleigh Dickinson University poll, though the Newark mayor describes himself as an “underdog.” He has dug his heels into the progressive lane, advocating for policies such as a public option for health insurance and supporting sanctuary cities—even as Republican voter registration closes a gap with Democrats, though the GOP still faces a more than 830,000 shortfall.

CAIR NJ executive director Selaedin Maksut, who in March called Israel’s war in Gaza a “genocide,” also spoke during Tuesday’s protest.

“Today, our CAIR New Jersey office stands in unity and solidarity with our brothers and sisters who stand against the oppressive and inhumane immigration policies of the Trump government and say ‘No!’ to the Delaney Hall here in Newark,” he said.

CAIR NJ, like its parent group, praised Hamas’s terror attack on Israel.

“That the people of Gaza effectively broke out of prison—resisting an occupation that is not only inhumane but also illegal under international law—is inevitable and should not be unexpected. We stand with Gazans and Palestinians as they demand dignity,” CAIR NJ wrote in an Oct. 9, 2023, post.

CAIR national similarly cheered on the massacre. Its executive director, Nihad Awad, said he “was happy to see” residents of Gaza “break the siege.”

Palestinian flags flanked Baraka as he addressed the crowd. Maksut, meanwhile, posted photos of anti-ICE protesters calling for the release of Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University student activist and foreign national whom the Trump administration moved to deport over his pro-Hamas campus organizing. On the same day as the Newark rally, anti-Israel agitators in neighboring New York were arrested after clashing with police while protesting Khalil’s detention.

Baraka, who did not return a request for comment, has a history of associating with anti-Semites. In 2017, he hosted Nation of Islam leader and notorious anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan at a Newark forum commemorating the 22nd anniversary of the Million Man March.

“For all these years, the American taxpayers’ money has been given each year to Israel to maintain them on the land of the Palestinians. So don’t you tell me that we have not earned by our sweat and blood a land of our own and to obligate them,” Farrakhan said. “Since we cannot get along with them in peace and equality after giving them 400 years of our sweat and blood and receiving in return some of the worst treatment human beings have ever experienced, we believe our contributions to this land and the suffering forced on us by white America justifies our demand for complete separation in a state or territory of our own.”

Farrakhan has railed against “satanic Jews” and in 2013 claimed that “the Jewish media” promoted “sexual degeneracy, profanity, and all kinds of sin.”

Baraka, who has been mayor of New Jersey’s largest city since 2014, faces a crowded field with opponents like Reps. Mikie Sherrill and Josh Gottheimer going into the June primary.