LOS ANGELES (AP) — Democratic U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla on Thursday was forcefully removed from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s news conference in Los Angeles and handcuffed by officers as he tried to speak up about immigration raids that have led to protests in California and around the country.
Video shows a Secret Service agent on Noem’s security detail grabbing Padilla, who represents California, by his jacket and shoving him from the room as he tried to interrupt Noem’s news conference in Los Angeles.
“I’m Sen. Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary,” he shouted in a halting voice.
The stunning scene of a U.S. senator being aggressively removed from a Cabinet secretary’s news conference prompted immediate outrage from his Democratic colleagues in the chamber. It comes as the Trump administration has aggressively targeted protesters in California who are demonstrating against immigration raids, including by sending in National Guard troops and Marines.
In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said Padilla “chose disrespectful political theater and interrupted a live news conference.” They claimed erroneously that Padilla did not identify himself and said Secret Service believed him to be an attacker.
“Padilla was told repeatedly to back away and did not comply with officers’ repeated commands,” the statement said, adding that “officers acted appropriately.”
Emerging afterward, Padilla said he and his colleagues have asked the department for more information on their “increasingly extreme immigration enforcement actions” and received little to no information.
“If this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question … I can only imagine what they are doing to farmworkers, to cooks, to day laborers throughout the Los Angeles community, and throughout California and throughout the country,” he said.
Noem told Fox LA afterward that she had a “great” conversation with Padilla after the scuffle, but called his approach “something that I don't think was appropriate at all.”
The fracas in Los Angeles came just days after Democratic U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver was indicted on federal charges alleging she assaulted and interfered with immigration officers outside a detention center in New Jersey while Newark’s mayor was being arrested after he tried to join a congressional oversight visit at the facility. Democrats have framed the charges as intimidation efforts by the Trump administration.
Padilla, the son of immigrants from Mexico, has been a harsh critic of President Donald Trump and his mass deportations agenda. In a post on the social platform X, he said of recent federal immigration raids in Los Angeles, “Trump isn’t targeting criminals in his mass deportation agenda, he is terrorizing communities, breaking apart families and putting American citizens in harm's way.”
At the Capitol, senators were sharing the video among one another as they gathered on the Senate floor for a series of votes. Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester, D-Del., said she texted Padilla immediately “to let him know we support him.”
She said she also showed it to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D.
“I think he was as shocked as we all were,” Blunt Rochester said. “So, hopefully we will come together as one voice.”
Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, called the video “utterly revolting” and said there should be consequences.
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Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Seung Min Kim in Washington and Jaimie Ding contributed to this report.
