Handcuffed by the feds, Sen. Alex Padilla was all of us who love California | Opinion
Finally!
Someone is willing to strike back at misleading statements or outright lies from the Trump administration as it justifies the “greatest deportation in American history” by targeting garment workers and immigrants in Los Angeles.
That someone is U.S. Senator Alex Padilla, who was manhandled on Thursday by federal authorities, wrestled to the ground and handcuffed for trying to ask a Trump loyalist a question at a Los Angeles press conference.
Padilla is known for his even temper and is not one given to fiery rhetoric – he’s a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, no less – but he was thrust into the national headlines, and set the internet ablaze, for standing up to an administration that has ginned up a fake crisis in California and demeaned our state and all immigrants in the process.
To paraphrase Gov. Gavin Newsom: If Trump will do this to Padilla, a United States Senator from California, imagine what this administration is doing every day to citizens and legal immigrants as they attack California and fail to discriminate between hard-working people needed in our state economy and real criminals.
“I’m Sen. Alex Padilla. I have questions for the Secretary. Hands off me!” said Padilla as he interrupted Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
“Just because you go through a half-dozen criminals doesn’t mean that the hundreds who have been arrested here in Los Angeles have committed any kind of criminal act.”
That is good and welcome trouble.
Noem never answered as Padilla, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee. Padilla’s office, in a statement within an hour of the incident, said Padilla “is not currently detained.”
“He was in the federal building to receive a briefing with General Guillot and was listening to Secretary Noem’s press conference,” the statement said.
What spurred Padilla to interrupt Noem’s insistence was that the National Guard and military would remain in Los Angeles, when such actions are not needed and are an egregious overreach by Trump.
I hope the treatment of the U.S. Senator does not become standard procedure for the Trump administration when it comes to questioning its immigration policies.
“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, it can only imagine what they’re doing to farmworkers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California and throughout the country,” Padilla said Thursday afternoon.
“We will hold this administration accountable.”
Padilla’s action comes on the heels of a Tuesday address by Gov. Gavin Newsom calling out the Trump administration for throwing gasoline into the LA protests by having the National Guard and military descend on Los Angeles.
A day earlier, Newsom condemned Trump for saying he called the governor.
“There was no call. Not even a voicemail,” Newsom posted on social media. “Americans should be alarmed that a President deploying Marines onto our streets doesn’t even know who he’s talking to.”
Trump administration is wrong
Noem said, “We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialist and the burdensome leadership that this governor and mayor have placed on this country and what they’ve tried to insert in this city.”
The only thing Los Angeles needs to be liberated from is Trump, Noem and other Trump acolytes.
Sure, arrest the criminals, as President Donald Trump said would be the priority for deportation. However, anyone suspected of being undocumented was rounded up. The White House announced on Wednesday that 330 people had been taken into custody since the ICE raids began in Los Angeles.
Of those, Noem has mentioned criminal records of about a dozen.
On Wednesday, Padilla and fellow Sen. Adam Schiff, also a Democrat, put out a statement blasting the Trump administration’s heavy crackdown on immigrants.
“While the Trump administration repeatedly claims it is focused on violent criminals and gangs, their draconian actions tell a different story,” the Senators wrote. “Targeting hardworking farmworkers and their families who have been doing the backbreaking work in the fields for decades is unjustified and unconscionable.”
I’m proud Padilla is not backing down to the Trump administration. I’m glad he barged into that news conference and spoke about what many of us have been thinking.
It is time that our elected leaders lead the good fight against an administration that is all too happy to trample on the Constitution to appease Trump.
This story was originally published June 12, 2025 at 1:35 PM.