On May 19, 2025, federal prosecutors charged Rep. LaMonica McIver, a New Jersey Democrat, under a little-known federal statute—18 U.S. Code Section 111—for allegedly assaulting and impeding Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers during a visit to a Newark detention facility. The officers refused her entry to conduct a federally authorized oversight visit. It’s still unclear whether the claimed assault was alleged to be physical or verbal. But what’s clear is that Rep. McIver’s prosecution reveals something much larger: Under the current administration, Section 111 is being reimagined as a blunt political weapon. Not to deter violence—but to silence dissent and criminalize opponents.

Section 111 makes it a crime to “forcibly assault, resist, oppose, impede, intimidate, or interfere with” federal officials engaged in their duties. But here’s the problem: You don’t even need to know they’re federal officials. You can be convicted for shoving someone you think is just someone yelling in your face, even just placing them in “reasonable fear of harm” without physical contact—if they turn out to be a plainclothes agent. That’s not hypothetical.

That’s precedent, courtesy of the Supreme Court over 50 years ago. Which means this: An undercover agent embedded in a protest, a public meeting, even a constituent town hall could claim to have been “impeded,” and the federal government can treat that moment as a federal crime. Under the current administration’s appetite for authoritarianism, that’s not a loophole, it’s a feature.

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