Agents Force Senator Asking Question Out of DHS Press Conference June 12

LOS ANGELES, CA — US Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA) interrupted Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Noem’s DHS press conference at a federal building Thursday trying to ask a question, but federal agents frog-marched him backwards out of the room, a show of force U.S. Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) called, ‘an assault on our Constitutional principles.”

Plain-clothes agents wearing badges at their waists moved Padilla out of the DHS press conference through a side door, where agents wearing gear marked FBI forced him to the floor and handcuffed him, as recorded in video of the disturbance. In an interview with SFchronicle.com, Padilla spokesperson Edgar Rodriguez said Padilla walked to the front of the press line, but did not “lunge” at Noem, as US Speaker of the  House Mike Johnson (R-LA) and  Noem later asserted.

In fact, at the time the video had begun recording, Padilla is being pushed while standing in the aisle level with seated members of the audience, next to a photographer and a television camera tripod.

DHS Press Conference: Interruption met with force

“The Secretary could have ignored him, asked him not to interrupt, or simply responded,” Reed said, “Instead, her staff aggressively assaulted a U.S. Senator while she looked on.  Senator Padilla was manhandled and silenced.  If they are treating Senator Padilla this way with cameras rolling, imagine how they are treating those who aren’t members of Congress. This is America.  Dissent should not be met with violence.”

In his own brief press conference after his forcible removal from the room, Padilla said he and his colleagues have been spending recent weeks attempting to learn more about DHS’s increasingly aggressive tactics, and was in the building when he learned Noem was holding a press conference. He entered the room, escorted by FBI and National Guards, who had been with him since he passed security screening at the door, and listened in the back of the room until he decided to move forward to ask his 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,” Padilla said during his remarks Thursday.

Speaker Johnson responded to questions about the DHS press conference, characterizing Padilla’s interruption as a  “charge,”.

“You don’t charge a sitting cabinet secretary…A sitting Member of Congress should not act like that…that behavior at a minimum it rises to the level of a censure,”  according to a CSPAN  video of Johnson’s remarks.

MSNBC’s Jacob Soboroff questioned Padilla about that accusation. The Senator said he had been screened before entering the building and that his shirt was marked “United States Senate.”  Inside the building, he said he was escorted by someone from the FBI and National Guard, and that those people also accompanied him to Noem’s press conference. In the video, as he was being forced out of the room, Padilla identified himself clearly.

“So the whole time, right where, the whole time being escorted in this federal building by somebody from the National Guard, somebody from the FBI, I’ve gone through screening. This is a federal building, and so I tell them, let’s go listen to the press conference.

They escort me over to that room, and I’m sitting in the back of the room, behind the cameras, behind the reporters, listening, listening, and at one point it was just too much to take, not the first but the second, attack on the political leadership of California and this notion that Donald Trump and Kristi Noem have to come in and rescue the people of Los Angeles from Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass.

It was too much, and so I spoke up. I introduced myself and said I had a question. Look, they said I wasn’t wearing my pin, my polo says United States Senate. There was no threat, there was no lunging. I raised my voice to ask a question, and it took what, maybe, half a second before multiple agents were on me.”

Despite the rough treatment at the DHS press conference, Padilla urged people preparing to protest the Trump Administration’s anti-democratic actions and policies to remain peaceful, including during Saturday’s planned nationwide No Kings rallies, which has two rallies in Providence, as well as protests in Westerly, Wakefield, North Kingstown and Middletown. The protests also coincide with a historic protest of authoritarian rule, Gaspee Days, celebrating the burning of the HMS Gaspee, termed America’s first blow for freedom at the dawn of the American Revolution.

“This abhorrent incident shows the Trump Administration has dropped any pretense of following the Constitution. The Administration is using the autocrat’s playbook of physical restraint to suppress its critics,” Reed said, stating that his Republican colleagues must now step forward to protect the nation from the Trump Administration.

“I am under no illusion that the President or his Administration will change their behavior unless forced to do so by Republicans joining Democrats or by the courts. All senators should recognize that this goes beyond the mistreatment of Senator Padilla and work to stop the Trump Administration from continuing to drag America toward authoritarianism.”