This article was originally published by the nonprofit newsroom CalMatters.
Federal agents forcibly removed U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla from a Homeland Security press conference in Los Angeles on Thursday, pushing him to the ground and handcuffing him in a skirmish widely condemned by California Democrats.
Padilla had walked into a press conference in which Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was defending her agency’s crackdown on illegal immigration in Los Angeles, where workplace raids starting last Friday spurred widespread protests, confrontations between activists and agents and President Donald Trump’s extraordinary deployment of the National Guard.
In videos of the incident shared on social media, Padilla identifies himself in front of an array of news cameras and says he has “questions for the secretary” as two men, apparently with the Secret Service, push him away from Noem’s lectern and toward the door.
He seemed to be challenging Noem’s assertion that immigration agents had focused on arresting “violent criminals” when guards pushed him into the hallway. Three armed men, two of them in FBI uniforms, forced Padilla onto the ground and handcuffed him behind his back. Another tells the person recording the video, who identifies himself as a Padilla staffer, to stop recording.
California Democrats immediately slammed the response.
“Senator Alex Padilla is one of the most decent people I know,” Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on social media. “This is outrageous, dictatorial, and shameful. Trump and his shock troops are out of control. This must end now.”
The Trump administration in recent weeks has ramped up not only immigration raids but also its hardline response to critics.
In Los Angeles, federal prosecutors charged well-known union leader David Huerta with conspiracy to impede a federal officer for his role in a protest outside a downtown garment warehouse last Friday where immigration agents were serving a search warrant and arresting immigrant workers. In New Jersey, they have charged Democratic U.S. Rep. Monica McIver with assault over a physical altercation that occurred when members of Congress visited an immigration detention center in Newark.
Gov. Newsom appointed Padilla to the Senate in 2020, filling the seat left by former Vice President Kamala Harris. He came up in politics through the Los Angeles City Council, and is the first Latino to represent California in the Senate.
After agents released Padilla, he met briefly with Noem. Speaking with reporters afterward, Padilla said he had a briefing scheduled in the federal building and went to the press conference because lawmakers have gotten “little to no information” when making inquiries about the department’s “increasingly extreme immigration enforcement actions.”
“If this is how the Department of Homeland Security responds to a senator with a question, I can only imagine what they’re doing to farmworkers, to cooks, to day laborers throughout the Los Angeles community,” he said.
Homeland Security officials wrote on the department’s X account that Padilla’s interruption was “disrespectful political theatre” and that Secret Service agents thought he was an attacker.
On Fox News, Noem said Padilla had not identified himself until he was “lunging forward.”
“Perhaps he wanted the scene,” she said.
Republicans, too, lept to defend their own.
“If I busted into a press conference with the Governor or Sen. Padilla, I promise you, the same exact thing would happen to me,” Assemblymember Joe Patterson, a Rocklin Republican, wrote on social media.
