Calif.
Senator Forcibly Removed and Handcuffed After Interrupting Noem
Alex
Padilla, Democrat of California, was shoved out of a room and handcuffed after
he tried to question Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, during a
news conference.
Shawn Hubler Jennifer Medina Jill Cowan
By Shawn
Hubler Jennifer Medina
and Jill Cowan
Reporting
from Los Angeles
June 12,
2025
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/12/us/politics/senator-alex-padilla-handcuffed.html
Senator Alex
Padilla, Democrat of California, was forcibly removed on Thursday from a news
conference being held by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, and
handcuffed after he interrupted Ms. Noem at a federal building in West Los
Angeles.
“Sir! Sir!
Hands off!” Mr. Padilla, 52, shouted as federal agents tried to muscle him out
of the room inside a government office building about 15 miles west of downtown
Los Angeles where Ms. Noem was speaking. “I am Senator Alex Padilla. I have a
question for the secretary.”
As Mr.
Padilla — an M.I.T. graduate, the son of Mexican immigrants and a Los Angeles
native — began asking about a bank of mug shots behind Ms. Noem, agents shoved
him out of the room, told him to drop to his knees in a hallway and handcuffed
him, based on videos taken by Mr. Padilla’s office and a Fox News reporter.
“Sir, sir.”
“Hands up. Hands up. “I’m Senator Alex Padilla. I have questions for the
secretary because the fact of the matter is, a half a dozen violent criminals
that should —” “On the ground. Hands behind your back. Hands behind your back.”
“If you let me — “All right. Cool — lay flat, lay flat.” “Other hand, sir.
Other hand.” “I was there peacefully. At one point, I had a question. And so I
began to ask a question. I was almost immediately forcibly removed from the
room. I was forced to the ground and I was handcuffed.” “We had a great
conversation.” “We’re all set up over there.” “Well, we will give you a few
comments.” “Yeah let’s go.” “I know the Senator — we had a great conversation.
Sat down and talked for 10, 15 minutes about operations in L.A., some
activities of the Department of Homeland Security. And so I thought it was very
productive. And I wish that he would have reached out and identified himself,
and let us know who he was and that he wanted to talk. I’ll let the law
enforcement speak to how this situation was handled, but I will say that its —
people need to identify themselves before they start lunging at people that are
doing press conferences.”
Hands behind
your back.
Senator
Alex Padilla, Democrat of California, was forced to the floor, handcuffed and
removed by federal agents after interrupting a news conference by the homeland
security secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday.
A small
group of reporters pivoted their cameras toward the disruption. Other national
and local journalists were forced to wait outside the building after officials
blocked access to the news conference shortly before the event began.
On the
videos, Mr. Padilla appeared stunned but repeatedly said he was a U.S. senator.
In an interview hours later, Mr. Padilla said that he had demanded to know why
he had been detained and where he was being escorted “when of all people, Corey
Lewandowski” — a combative former Trump campaign aide and adviser to Ms. Noem —
“comes running down the hall and he starts yelling, ‘Let him go! Let him go!’”
In the tense
hyperpartisanship of the moment, the episode quickly swelled into a cause
célèbre for both parties. Democratic senators, House members and governors
rushed to denounce the treatment of a sitting senator, framing it as the latest
escalation in authoritarian actions by the Trump administration. It followed
the indictment on Tuesday of Representative LaMonica McIver of New Jersey and
the arrest of Mayor Ras Baraka of Newark, after the officials, both Democrats,
tried to visit a new immigration detention facility in the city.
Republicans
just as eagerly tried to frame Mr. Padilla’s behavior as in line with what they
have called the lawlessness of the political left as President Trump tries to
combat illegal immigration.
Ms. Noem had
been at a lectern thanking the Army, Marines and National Guard for providing
“security” when Mr. Padilla made his entrance. While some protests have erupted
in downtown Los Angeles, the towering white federal building where her news
conference occurred was more than 15 miles away from the action and had no
protesters outside.
Mr. Padilla
said in the interview on Thursday evening that he learned of Ms. Noem’s news
conference while he was waiting for a scheduled briefing down the hall. He said
he had asked for answers about the administration’s “increasingly extreme”
immigration actions since January and had not been able to get them.
When he saw
Ms. Noem and her entourage pass him, he said, he asked the National Guard
member and an F.B.I. agent who had escorted him whether they would also take
him into the news conference. They did, he said, and he initially stood at the
back of the room, silently observing behind the cameras.
But when Ms.
Noem said that federal agents were in Los Angeles “to liberate this city from
the socialists and the burdensome leadership” of the Democratic leaders of
California and Los Angeles, he conceded he could no longer stay silent.
The footage
shows Mr. Padilla stepping to one side, introducing himself and starting to
call out a question about mug shots that federal authorities had said were of
violent undocumented criminals. He said he hoped to ask about others who have
been detained with no criminal record, but, as he spoke, agents swarmed him and
forcibly removed him from the room.
Ms. Noem and
other Trump administration officials asserted that Mr. Padilla had failed to
identify himself and had assumed a threatening demeanor.
“I will say
that people need to identify themselves before they start lunging at people,”
she said.
But Mr.
Padilla said that he had not only identified himself in the room, as shown in
the footage, but had also introduced himself to the agents who had escorted him
from the lobby.
Tricia
McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said that he
had not been wearing his Senate security pin and that the Secret Service had
taken him for an attacker. She accused Mr. Padilla of engaging in
“disrespectful political theater.”
In a social
media post, the F.B.I.’s deputy director, Dan Bongino, said that the bureau’s
agents “acted completely appropriately while assisting Secret Service” agents
and echoed the claim by other federal agencies that Mr. Padilla had physically
resisted law enforcement and had failed to wear a security pin.
The F.B.I.’s
chief spokesman, Ben Williamson, was unapologetic.
“When an
unrecognized Senator in plain clothes and wearing no security pin became
disruptive and subsequently resisted law enforcement, our F.B.I. L.A. personnel
responded in support of Secret Service completely appropriately,” he wrote on
social media. “We stand by them and appreciate their swift action.”
The Secret
Service members involved in the encounter will not face discipline, said
Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman.
Afterward,
Mr. Padilla and Ms. Noem met for about 15 minutes, both said. Mr. Padilla said
that before Mr. Lewandowski instructed the agents to uncuff him, he had no idea
whether he was about to be jailed or simply removed from the building. He said
he had never been arrested or even handcuffed before.
Mr. Padilla
said that the way he was treated as a sitting member of Congress had raised his
level of concern for how the federal government has begun to treat everyday
people.
“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, you
can only imagine what they’re doing to farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers
out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California and throughout the
country,” he said at a news conference, appearing to briefly be overcome with
emotion.
The middle
child of a short-order cook from Jalisco, Mexico, and a housekeeper from
Chihuahua, Mr. Padilla was earning his way through school with janitorial jobs
and work-study programs when his plan to become an aerospace engineer was
derailed by the anti-immigrant politics that gripped California during the
1990s.
Galvanized
by Proposition 187, a 1994 ballot initiative that would have barred
undocumented immigrants from public services, including schools and
nonemergency health care, he became involved in politics.
Though they
represent the nation’s largest state in Congress’s high chamber, Mr. Padilla
and the newly elected Adam Schiff still cut a low profile in the Senate.
Thursday’s events could provide a political boost to Mr. Padilla, who was
initially appointed to his seat by Gov. Gavin Newsom to replace Kamala Harris
when she became vice president in 2021.
The episode
stoked intense outrage in Los Angeles, where the ordinarily soft-spoken and
slow-talking Mr. Padilla has long been a popular figure. On social media, the
city’s mayor, Karen Bass, called his treatment “absolutely abhorrent and
outrageous” and reiterated a demand she has made since a series of militarized
immigration enforcement actions started in Southern California last Friday:
“This administration’s violent attacks on our city must end.”
Mr. Newsom
jumped in, calling the senator “one of the most decent people I know.”
“This is
outrageous, dictatorial, and shameful,” Mr. Newsom wrote in a social media
post. “Trump and his shock troops are out of control. This must end now.”
Senator
Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, broke ranks with her party, calling what
happened “very disturbing,” though she acknowledged she was unsure of what had
led to the confrontation. “It looks like he is being manhandled and physically
removed. It is hard to imagine a justification for that.”
Senator Lisa
Murkowski of Alaska, another Republican moderate, called the incident
“horrible” and “shocking at every level.” She continued: “It’s not the America
I know.”
More in line
with the mainstream Republican reaction was Representative Steve Scalise of
Louisiana, the House majority leader, who told reporters in the Capitol that
Mr. Padilla was in Los Angeles trying to “make the situation worse” and “stir
angst against the federal agents who were coming to help” the city.
Senator
Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, addressed the Senate floor
regarding the treatment of Mr. Padilla.
“I just saw
something that sickened my stomach,” he said. “The manhandling of a United
States senator. We need immediate answers to what the hell went on.”
Carl Hulse,
Eileen Sullivan and Glenn Thrush contributed reporting from Washington.
Shawn Hubler
is The Times’s Los Angeles bureau chief, reporting on the news, trends and
personalities of Southern California.
Jennifer
Medina is a Los Angeles-based political reporter for The Times, focused on
political attitudes and demographic change.
Jill Cowan
is a Times reporter based in Los Angeles, covering the forces shaping life in
Southern California and throughout the state.
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