US Senator Taken to Ground and Handcuffed

Via NBC News: Sen. Alex Padilla is forcibly removed from DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s news conference in Los Angeles.

Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., was forcibly removed from a news conference in Los Angeles on Thursday after he tried to question Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem during a news conference related to immigration.

“I am Sen. Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary,” Padilla said to Noem, which prompted several men dressed in plain clothes to physically push him out of the room. A top FBI official later saidbureau personnel and Secret Service agents were involved in the senator’s removal.

Padilla’s office shared a video of the incident with NBC News. The video shows Padilla being taken into a hallway outside and pushed face forward onto the ground as officers with FBI-identifying vests told the senator to put his hands behind his back. The officers then handcuffed him.

Padilla has been in the Senate since 2021, and prior to that, was the Secretary of State, a state Senator, and a member of the LA City Council, including being its president. He has been active in politics since 1999. He was in the Federal Building in Los Angeles. While it is reasonable, perhaps, that any one person in the room did not know who he was, it strikes me as unlikely that no one in the room knew who he was.

Anyone in the room had to have gone through security. While I understand the need to be vigilant, the notion that it was necessary and appropriate for him to be treated in this way was simply unacceptable, but it speaks to the nature of the current administration and the kind of regime they are attempting to construct.

Speaking to reporters later Thursday, Padilla said he was receiving a briefing from military officials when he learned Noem was in the same building and decided to join her briefing.

“I was there peacefully,” he said. “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.”

Here’s one of the videos, which is the only one I have seen that shows what happened in the hallway.

Again, this was the Federal Building in Los Angeles. There is no way this was necessary.

I have been thinking about the easiest way to explain and identify authoritarianism, and it comes down to this: the government asserts or orders, and it expects compliance. The absence of compliance leads to the use of force.

You will obey, and if you don’t, we will make you. It isn’t about rights or justice or legality. It is about WE are in charge and YOU will obey.

Secondary to all of that, but still important, is Noem’s unwillingness to answer questions. This administration doesn’t think they are accountable and only have to talk to their supporters.

That’s not democracy.

Here is Padilla’s statement.

He’s right.

See also his video statement via the NBC News link.