Senator Padilla handcuffed in the middle of a press conference: what really happened?

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was in Los Angeles to give a press conference on Thursday on the Trump administration immigration policy and actions in the city. In attendance was Senator Alex Padillo who interrupted her speech and attempted to ask a question.

He was immediately set upon by several men in plainclothes and pushed out of the room. In a video of the incident, you can see him saying: “I am Senator Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary. Because the fact of the matter is, half a dozen violent criminals that you are rotating on your…,” he struggled to say before he was pushed out of the room.

Sen. Padillla holds a press conference: What really happened?

The US senator for California held a press conference not long after he was ejected from where Secretary Noem was speaking. He explained that for several weeks, he and his colleagues have been trying to get answers from the Trump administration “on their increasingly extreme [immigration] enforcement actions.”

“And we’ve gotten little to no information in response to our enquiries,” he told the press. For that reason, he was at the press conference “to hear what she had to say and learn any new additional information.”

He then related that at one point he had a question, he insisted that he was there peacefully expressing his First Amendment rights, and as soon as he spoke up, he was “almost immediately forced from the room.”

He explained that he was forced to the ground and handcuffed, which you can see in the video being done by FBI agents. However, Padilla said, “I was not arrest. I was not detained.”

Padilla says Trump administration will be held to account

“I will say this,” the senator continued. “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 farmers, to cooks, to day-laborers, out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California and throughout the country.”

“We will hold this administration accountable,” he concluded.

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