LOS ANGELES — California Sen. Alex Padilla dominated headlines last week when he was handcuffed for disrupting Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s news conference.
And while the news cycle has whirred at warp speed to other issues, Padilla is continuing to speak out about the incident — not just to highlight his own ordeal, he says, but to warn that it could happen to others who object to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
He didn’t have to wait long to prove his point. Just as Padilla took to the Senate floor to deliver an emotional speech, New York City comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander was arrested in a courthouse after demanding to see a judicial warrant for an immigrant federal officials were attempting to detain. The Department of Homeland Security said Lander assaulted and impeded the work of a federal officer.
Padilla, in a phone interview after his speech, said he was “sadly, not shocked in the least bit” to hear of Lander’s detention. He spoke to POLITICO about Lander, the backstory of his appearance at Noem’s news conference, the words that pushed him to interrupt her remarks and more.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The administration got a good amount of backlash and outrage after what happened to you, yet you’re still seeing federal immigration agents treat elected officials like Lander in this way. What does that tell you about how the administration absorbed the criticism that came after your incident?
They clearly don’t care. If we go play-by-play since what happened to me last Thursday … it certainly got a lot of attention. It may or may not have played a small part in an announcement I heard about on Friday [where] the president directed the Department of Homeland Security to ease up on enforcement actions at hotels and agricultural fields and restaurants. I was asked at that time, was that a step in the right direction? And it might have been a baby step in the right direction, but we see what was next. By Monday, they’re reversing that direction — and not only reversing it, but what happened in between was Donald Trump via social media saying, “Let’s go all in with enforcement in blue cities.” If there was any question as to whether or not this was a raw political attack on cities that elect Democratic leaders, you have all the proof that you need. And it’s absolutely wrong, it’s absolutely un-American.
Going back to last Thursday, the moment I felt compelled to speak — not just as a senator, but as an American — was in hearing Secretary Noem, and surely not for the first time, suggest that the mission of the federalized National Guard and the Marines coming to Los Angeles was to “liberate” Los Angeles from its governor and its mayor. I mean, that is a horrible notion and a horrible precedent to set, if that’s where things are going.
That was the theme of your speech today — focusing on that phrasing about “liberating” Los Angeles. What is it about that rhetoric that startled you so much that you wanted to highlight it?
Just stop and think about that notion. It is not the job of a president or any administration to dictate which governors or which mayors lead the constituents that duly and democratically elected them. It is not the mission of the United States military to deploy domestically to “liberate” cities from their duly elected political leadership. But it is the weaponization of the National Guard in this case, and the Department of Defense, the Marines, in particular, by this president. He is on a retribution tour, and he’s got blue cities and Democratic leaders in his sights. … When are Republicans going to stand up and hold him accountable?
You have gotten some criticism from the right that interrupting the press conference was political theater. How do you respond to that?
Nothing could be further from the truth. You can’t make this up. I was in the federal building in West Los Angeles for a scheduled briefing by representatives of Northern Command — General Guillot, the four-star general overseeing this military operation in Los Angeles. I got to the building, was met at the entrance by a National Guardsman and an FBI agent, who put me through the security screening process, escorted me up [and] put me into a conference room for the briefing. As we’re waiting for the briefing to start, we catch wind that the secretary of Homeland Security is a couple doors down the hall starting a press briefing, and my briefing was going to be delayed because some of the people I’m supposed to be hearing from are in that press briefing.
So the thought hits me: Well, maybe if we go listen, they might be sharing some helpful information or insightful information. So I asked. I didn’t just get up and start walking, I asked, “Can we go over and listen?” My escorts — again, a National Guardsman, an FBI agent — escorted me to the press briefing. They opened the door for me, they walked in and were standing near me as I was listening for several minutes during the press conference. And then when I felt compelled to start asking questions, before I could get two or three words out, there were hands on me, and you saw what happened next. So this was not theatrics. This was not me crashing an event. You can’t get more secure than being in an FBI office in the second-largest city in America.
California leaders have been pushing back against the intervention from the federal government to handle the protests and at times destructive incidents in Los Angeles. They’ve argued that local law enforcement could handle the unrest. But there has been some concern about how local law enforcement handled some of the larger crowds. The Los Angeles Press Club just sued the LAPD alleging that journalists had been routinely targeted, infringing on their rights to cover the protests. Do you have any thoughts on how local law enforcement handled themselves?
I haven’t seen what’s transpired in the last couple days. I can speak generally to the last week and a half. Los Angeles is no stranger to rallies and protests and marches, et cetera. I do have confidence in the sheriff, the sheriff’s department, the police chief and the police department to handle it. Have they been perfect over the years? No, but by and large, they’re very good at it.
What was not helpful, what was without need [was] the federalization of National Guard troops. Them being sent in escalated tensions in Los Angeles. It was already bad enough with the increasingly cruel and theatrical detentions that were happening. In talking to the police chief regularly, in talking to the sheriff regularly, not only were the federal forces not necessary. It was counterproductive. It made their jobs harder. They were frustrated because there’s been no communication or coordination by the federal agencies with local law enforcement.
You spoke today about getting involved in political activism in 1994 – the year that Proposition 187, which sought to bar immigrants without legal status from accessing public social services, was on the ballot. Prop 187 is seen as a catalyst for Latino political involvement. Do you think we’re in a new Prop 187-like moment?
There are so many parallels. Look, as painful as my experience might have been on Thursday, not just for me, but for my family, and frankly, anybody watching … if one of the outcomes from what happened is that more people are inspired to get engaged and to influence our government and our politics for the better, to be more consistent with our true American values, to embrace diversity, to embrace the contributions of so many hard working non-violent migrants, and we have a political discourse and a government and a society that reflects that beautiful diversity, then that is a positive outcome. But we clearly have a lot of work to do.
The California story of people responding to Proposition 187, not by cowering to the anti-immigrant rhetoric and forces, but by engaging — like my parents, who have been in the United States for decades without any interest or urgency in becoming citizens, finally taking those steps, not just to protect their status in the United States, but so that they can register and vote and have a voice. And we had a whole generation, me and so many other of my colleagues now in public office, that were inspired by 187 to organize and register people to vote and to run for office. The politics of California today are very different, much more progressive on a number of issues, and that is a model for organizers and communities throughout the country should they choose to follow it.