Assault on Senator Padilla

On Thursday June 12 Senator Alex Padilla was assaulted by security guards at a press conference in Los Angeles.

Padilla later explained what happened:

“I'm here in Los Angeles today, and I was here in the federal building in the conference room, awaiting a scheduled briefing from federal officials as part of my responsibility as a senator to provide oversight and accountability. While I was waiting for the briefing…, I learned that Secretary Noem was having a press conference a couple of doors down the hall. Since the beginning of the year, but especially…over the course of recent weeks, I—several of my colleagues—have been asking the Department of Homeland Security for more information and more answers on their increasingly extreme immigration enforcement actions. And we've gotten little to no information in response to our inquiries.

“And so I came to the press conference to hear what she had to say, to see if I could learn any new additional information…. 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. I was not arrested. I was not detained.

“I will say this. 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. We will hold this administration accountable.”

 Immediately after the event Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said to reporters outside the building: “I will say that people need to identify themselves before they start lunging at people” and accused him of engaging in “disrespectful political theatre.”

This is obviously untrue. In the videos we can plainly hear Padilla identify himself as a Senator. He was escorted to the press conference by FBI and National Guard agents who had been with him in another room. They certainly knew who he was. He also did not “lunge” toward anyone – he resisted being roughed up by the security guards and called out “Sir! Sir! Hands off! I am Senator Alex Padilla”. 

The only excuse the security staff have is Padilla was not wearing his senate security pin. That and his parents are Mexican immigrants, so he looks like the people they are hunting down to deport.

Noem wasn’t the only Republican to blame Padilla for the incident. House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested that the Senate should censure Padilla for “wildly inappropriate behavior”. Meanwhile some Democrats have called for Noem’s resignation. [Fat chance for that – MAGAts have no shame]

Of more significance than the assault is what Noem was saying that prompted Padilla to ask a question:

 "We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city."

She actually admitted that the purpose of the ICE raids in California was not just to remove undocumented criminals from the country. No, it is to overthrow the legitimate democratically elected governments of the city of Los Angeles and the State of California, because – they are not Republican.

Thom Hartmann commented on Noem’s proclamation:

For the record, the job of the federal government is not to “liberate” cities from the leaders they themselves have elected. That’s what Putin did when he forced all the elected governors of the Russian states (oblasts) to resign and replaced them with men he had appointed. Even suggesting it is deeply and profoundly unAmerican.

 

 

Sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/12/us/politics/senator-alex-padilla-handcuffed.html

 https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-12-2025

https://hartmannreport.com/p/noem-the-fbi-and-trump-just-sent-3ee