UPDATE, 1:05 PM: Outrage and spin are proving the partisan fallout of Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA) being hauled out of a press conference in LA today by Homeland Security Sec. Kristi Noem and handcuffed by federal agents.
After the appalling incident, Sen. Padilla explained what occurred when he went to ask Noem a question about the thousands of troops deployed to LA and the ramped up cruel rounding up of undocumented immigrants (and more than a few legal immigrants) by ICE agents in recent weeks. “I began to ask a question,” the Senator detailed “I was almost immediately forcibly removed from the room. I was forced to the ground, and I was handcuffed. I was not arrested. I was not detained.”
The clarification about whether or not California’s senior Senator was actually arrested or not, did nothing to less the blow Padilla believed what happened to him was to American democracy and immigrant communities.
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“If this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question, if this is how the Department of Homeland Security responds to a senator with a question, we can only imagine what they’re doing to farm workers, to cooks to day laborers in the Los Angeles community and throughout California and throughout the country,” the Senator, the son of Mexican immigrants, said outside the federal building in West LA this afternoon. “We will hold this administration accountable.”
Fellow Golden State native Kamala Harris was quick to weigh in on what occurred to the man who replaced her in the Senate when she became Vice-President in 2021:
In DC, as the attack on Sen. Padilla took over cable news and the Internet, Democratic House leader Hakeem Jefferies responded in stronger than usual words from the New York Congressman. “The Trump administration is a disgrace, Secretary Noem is a disgrace, the manhandling of Sen Alex Padilla was a disgrace ..it’s un-American,” exclaimed Jeffries Thursday with California’s other Senator Adam Schiff standing beside him.
In typical Trump administration fashion, Sec. Noem took to the safe space of Fox News to offer justification for the assault on Sen. Padilla.
“Nobody knew who he was when he came into the room, creating a scene,” Noem told Fox’s Martha MacCallum in live counter-programming to Sen. Padilla’s speaking to the media.
“He was removed from the room, and yes, they started to put handcuffs on him when he finally identified himself. and then that was stopped,” she added of the potential Constitutional crisis flashpoint moment. “They said he wants to talk to us and. sure, I’d love to sit down and visit. So, we went to a room and visited for 10 or 15 minutes and then exchanged phone numbers.”
With more Republicans picking up on false accusations of “storming cabinet secretaries,” Noem doubled down on the cliches on TV: “I’m so sick of the politics, Martha, this is literally people’s lives.”
As Noem spins her own fictional version of events, there has been no confirmation from the Senator’s office of that meeting with the DHS Secretary.
It should be noted Sen. Padilla was clearly identifying himself as a Senator in the widely circulated video of the incident confirms. Also, it should be pointed out Noem as met and interacted with Sen. Padilla on numerous occasions, especially since the former South Dakota governor was appointed to run DHS.
On the video of the attack on Sen. Padilla, who was in the high level security building for a meeting with military leaders about the troop presence in LA, repeated he had a question. Sen. Padilla had been in the room for several minutes before starting to ask his question, with no apparent move by federal agents to a so-called security threat.
Earlier today in a hearing on Capitol Hill, Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth, who is a defendant in Gov. Gavin Newsom‘s bid for a Temporary Restraining Order on troops in LA, refused to commit to the adminstration compling with court orders.
PREVIOUSLY, 12:22 PM: “We are a democracy, but we can lose that democracy,” a mournful Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) said today at the Capital in DC mere minutes after Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA) was stunningly dragged out of a press conference in West LA by Sec. Kristi Noem. He was handcuffed and hauled off. “This is so wrong, this is so wrong,” Sen Murray added.
The Senator’s office says the senior Senator from the state of California and son of Mexican immigrants was not detained, but he has not emerged from the federal building yet. DHS have said that the Secret Service shockingly reacted, or over reacted, because they thought the Senator was an “attacker” who seemed to “lunge at Noem – a statement that makes no sense with the level of security required to even get inside a federal building.
With tensions sky high in LA and thousands of National Guard and US. Marines deployed and protests over the harsh ICE raids. DHS says the Secretary and the Senator had a 15-minute meeting afterwards. That has not been independently confirmed, but Senator Padilla is expected to speak soon.
The widely condemned reaction by federal agents as the Senator was seeking to ask Trump loyalist Noem questions comes as massive raids on undocumented immigrants, including church goers and school graduations, have been unleashed all over California and the nation in the last week. As a pivotal court hearing is set to start in the next hour on Gov. Gavin Newsom request for an emergency Temporary Restraining Order on Trump federalizing the Golden State National Guard on June 7 without any consultation with the two-term Democrat.
Newsom expressed his own outrage at what happened to Sen. Padilla today – pointing the finger right at Trump and his authoritarian rule.
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