Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) castigated President Donald Trump as a “vindictive president on a tour of retribution” and warned of what the administration was doing to Americans around the country in “places where there are no cameras” in his first comments on the Senate floor since his handcuffing at Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s press briefing last week.
Padilla’s handcuffing marked a sharp turn in an already dramatic week for Los Angeles, where Trump last week deployed National Guard troops and Marines to contain protests and unrest that erupted in response to the administration’s immigration detentions in the city. The altercation sparked outrage from Democrats, who slammed the administration’s heavy-handed response to a sitting senator.
In a statement released at the time, Padilla — as well as other Democrats who jumped on the messaging bandwagon — warned that his treatment by federal law enforcement portended higher risks for ordinary Americans.
He emphasized the same message to his Senate colleagues on Tuesday, cautioning that such a crackdown threatened to scare Americans into silence.
“How many Americans in the year 2025 see a vindictive president on a tour of retribution, unrestrained by the majority of this separate and coequal branch of government and wonder if it’s worth it to stand up or to speak out? If a United States senator becomes too afraid to speak up, how can we expect any other American to do the same?” Padilla said on Tuesday.
The California senator got emotional while describing how he struggled to maintain his balance as he was manhandled and forced out of the briefing room last week, before he was shoved to the ground and handcuffed, “first on my knees and then flat on my chest,” he recounted.
Padilla said he was placed in cuffs after attempting to ask a question pushing back against Noem’s claim that “the purpose of federal law enforcement and the purpose of the United States military was to ‘liberate Los Angeles from our governor and our mayor,’” which the senator decried as an “un-American” sentiment.
Noem and other administration officials have defended the actions, saying Padilla was just trying to draw attention to himself. “It wasn’t becoming of a U.S. senator or a public official, and perhaps he wanted the scene,” Noem told Fox News shortly after the dustup.
Padilla said that he had been escorted into the briefing room by a National Guardsman and an FBI agent, of whom he had asked permission to attend Noem’s press conference and who had walked him through security screening. Still, Padilla said, the law enforcement personnel “stood by silently” as he was forcibly removed from the room and handcuffed.
“If what you saw happen can happen when the cameras are on, imagine not only what can happen but what is happening in so many places where there are no cameras,” Padilla said, before warning that the incident was “not just about immigrant communities or even just the state of California — it’s about every single American who values their constitutional rights.”
The senator encouraged Americans to exercise their right to peacefully protest in the face of the increasing crackdowns from the Trump administration, adding that “no one is coming to save us but us.”
“If this administration is this afraid of just one senator with a question, colleagues, imagine what the voices of tens of millions of Americans peacefully protesting can do,” he said.
