Sen. Alex Padilla, the Democratic senator from California, was forcibly removed from a press conference held by the Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, on Thursday that was focused on ICE’s campaign of terror against the people of Los Angeles. Padilla was thrown to the ground and handcuffed. And it put a real damper on the current debate about the controversial cryptocurrency bill that Chuck Schumer is currently trying to get passed in the Senate.
Two videos of Padilla’s arrest at the federal building in West Los Angeles have gone viral, with one video showing the senator getting pulled out of the press conference by agents wearing no uniform. Padilla can be heard trying to ask Noem questions about the presence of federal agents in Los Angeles.
A second video, captured by one of Padilla’s staff, showed uniformed agents getting Padilla on his knees before demanding that he put his hands behind his back as they pushed him to the ground.
Padilla appears to be hesitant to put his hands behind his back, given the fact that 1) two agents are holding his arms already, making that impossible and 2) they were already pushing him to the ground, meaning he would smash his face if he didn’t have his hands in front of him to break the fall. The officers then handcuffed him.
One of the agents in the second video clearly tried to obstruct the view of the staffer who was recording and can be heard saying, “There’s no recording allowed out here per FBI rights.” It’s not clear what that’s supposed to mean. It’s not illegal to record federal agents, no matter what people like Noem say about “doxxing.”
Padilla is no longer being held by authorities and held a press conference after the incident outside the federal building. The senator stressed that he was not arrested and “not detained,” though the definition of detained would certainly be debatable given what we could all see on video.
“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 farmworkers, to cooks, to day-laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California, and throughout the country,” Padilla said.
Sen. Schumer, who has largely refused to stop Trump’s assault on the Constitution, opting instead for tough words on social media, expressed his anger on the Senate floor Thursday. Schumer called for an investigation into the incident, though it’s not clear what needs to be investigated. Everything was captured on video. A sitting U.S. senator was thrown to the ground and put in handcuffs for trying to ask questions of the executive branch.
President Donald Trump has federalized and deployed at least 4,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles and about 700 Marines to respond to protests that are in their seventh day. The L.A. community has taken to the streets to oppose the violence from ICE, a rogue agency that’s arresting people at their worksites and in their cars.
One video posted by the United Farm Workers this week is particularly chilling, showing Border Patrol vehicles driving in a farm field as people in the distance run after a presumably undocumented person. The caption reads, “We feed you, They hunt us.”
Another video from TikTok showed a woman just trying to get to her apartment in downtown Los Angeles on June 9 and being shot by police for no reason. Still another viral video captured an Australian news crew being intentionally shot by an officer in Los Angeles.
President Trump was elected on the promise of mass deportation, something that some voters apparently didn’t take seriously. A new poll from Quinnipiac University this week shows that just 43% of Americans approve of Trump’s actions on immigration. Fifty-four percent disapprove. But Trump has sworn to keep his campaign going, no matter how many families he breaks up or who gets hurt.
If Schumer is serious about treating the current moment like an emergency, he’ll put up every kind of roadblock he can to grind business in the Senate to a halt. But that seems unlikely, especially since he’s currently trying to pass the Genius Act to help the cryptocurrency industry. After all, this is the guy who gave Trump everything he wanted back in March with a budget bill that funded the government, even as Trump was destroying everything he could within the country. And now we’re all paying for Schumer’s complicity.
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