Outrage over the removal of Sen Alex Padilla

“We know if this can happen to Sen. Padilla, it certainly can happen to any American,” U.S. Rep. Sam Liccardo, D-San Jose, said. “We’re seeing that today with the deportation of American children and the arrests, the unconstitutional arrests, of many members of our community.”

The Trump administration has been escalating its deportation efforts in recent weeks, targeting workplaces and sending in California’s National Guard against objections of state leadership to quell protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions in Los Angeles.

Padilla attended Noem’s press conference “to hear what she had to say” after questions around the Trump administration’s increasingly aggressive immigration actions have gone unanswered, he told reporters after the incident.

In a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, the Department of Homeland Security said Padilla did not identify himself properly and “lunged” toward Noem.

“@SecretService thought he was an attacker and officers acted appropriately,” the statement read.

Liccardo dismissed that sentiment wholeheartedly and said that Padilla was “the most recognizable human being in that building.”

“Quite simply, they are lying,” he said. “I think it’s important for the media to call them out on their lies, because this is how authoritarian regimes behave. They commit this kind of violent silencing of dissent and then pretend it away.”

Full-throated condemnation of the incident has come from every corner of the Democratic Party in the hours after the removal and handcuffing, including from U.S. Rep. Kevin Mullin, D-South San Francisco, who likened the Trump administration’s actions to “a wannabe dictatorship.”

“It’s utterly shameful to forcibly remove a United States senator from a press conference for simply asking a question. President Trump’s administration has devolved into a wannabe dictatorship,” he said in a statement. “Sen. Padilla is a member of Congress who has every right to question the administration’s chaotic and inhumane actions.”

U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, who also represents California in the U.S. Senate, delivered remarks on the floor after the incident asking fellow lawmakers to step across party lines and condemn what had happened to Padilla.

“We ask, ‘How do you lose a democracy? How does one lose a democracy?’ This is how you lose a democracy, actions like today,” he said. “Will this be roundly condemned? Will this be roundly condemned or somehow will we just fall down some partisan line again and see another leap towards autocracy in this country?”

State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, put it even more bluntly.

“Anyone who continues to doubt whether this is fascism is living in an alternate reality,” he said in a statement. “We must mobilize and put a stop to this frontal assault on our democracy and our most basic liberties.”