Chaotic scenes in which Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) was pressed to the ground and handcuffed by federal agents set the political world aflame on Thursday.
Padilla had come to a news conference being held by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, raising his voice to ask questions. Agents, reportedly including at least one member of Noem’s official security detail, swarmed Padilla, moving him to a corridor before pressing him to the ground and placing the handcuffs on him.
The stunning moment played out against the political backdrop of disorder in California. President Trump’s administration is seeking to crack down even harder on immigrants without legal status, and pro-immigrant activists are trying to block Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from detaining people.
Anti-ICE demonstrators have hurled debris at police and set cars ablaze. The strife — and the political debate — intensified after Trump ordered the deployment of the National Guard and the Marines. He did so in contravention of the wishes of California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D).
Here are the main takeaways from the Padilla episode.
The imagery matters more than anything else
The sheer potency of the Padilla video is more powerful than anything else.
The most widely circulated clip, which lasts less than a minute, begins with Padilla standing relatively close to where Noem is speaking, but not within arm’s reach or making any sudden move toward her. Agents begin to push him further away.
As they continue physically pressing in on him, the senator says, “I am Sen. Alex Padilla, I have questions for the secretary.”
Padilla begins to make remarks that he never gets to finish related to “violent criminals,” and he is pushed into an adjacent corridor, briefly out of view of the camera. A voice — presumably Padilla’s — says “hands off.”
Moments later, with three agents surrounding him, he is told to get “on the ground” and to put his hands behind his back. At least two of the agents have their hands on Padilla holding him to the ground at this point, and cuffs are placed on him.
A voice from an unidentified man then tells the person filming the events on their cellphone that no recording is allowed.
The brief clip ends.
But the shocking nature of seeing a sitting senator treated in such a way resonated immediately, taking over cable TV networks and social media and sparking a political firestorm.
Democrats see evidence of Trump’s creeping authoritarianism
Democrats responded with fury to the treatment of Padilla, casting it as horrifying in itself — and as emblematic of the Trump administration’s broader approach.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris wrote on social media that the way Padilla was treated was a “shameful and stunning abuse of power.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he was “sickened to my stomach” by what he had seen.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called it “a horrifying moment in our nation’s history.”
Democrats, and millions of liberal Americans, were already outraged about Trump’s deployment of the National Guard and the Marines, which they argue was an unnecessary and purposefully inflammatory move.
Several media outlets reported that Padilla’s attempt to question Noem took place after she had claimed federal agents were going “to liberate this city” from its “socialist” leaders.
Soon after the incident on Thursday, Newsom called the treatment of Padilla “outrageous, dictatorial and shameful,” and Bass said it was “absolutely abhorrent.”
But liberals also see the immigration question as part of a bigger picture, in which Trump has sought to exert his muscle against universities, the media, judges and law firms, as well as his political foes.
To them, he is a president exceptional in all the wrong ways — in his intolerance of dissent, and his willingness to use the levers of government power to crush it.
The images of Padilla being handcuffed crystallizes their case.
The White House says Padilla to blame
The White House has vigorously defended the agents’ treatment of Padilla. They are saying the senator is to blame.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement, “Padilla stormed a press conference, without wearing his Senate pin or previously identifying himself to security, yelled, and lunged toward Secretary Noem.”
The video of the incident does not appear to show Padilla wearing the pin that identifies senators, but it also does not include images of him lunging at Noem. Moreover, he clearly does inform the agents who swarm him that he is a senator. The White House’s argument is that he did not do so early enough in the encounter.
Jackson added, “Padilla didn’t want answers; he wanted attention.”
The official X account of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) also contended that Padilla had “interrupted a live press conference without identifying himself” and had “lunged” at Noem.
The DHS also alleged that Padilla was “told repeatedly to back away and did not comply with officers’ repeated commands.”
Noem herself told Fox News soon after, “He was never arrested. … Nobody knew who he was when he came into the room creating a scene. He was removed from the room. Yes, they started to put handcuffs on him — when he finally identified himself and then that was stopped.”
Padilla says it’s false to suggest nobody knew who he was, even before the melee erupted, because a member of the National Guard and an FBI agent escorted him into Noem’s press conference from elsewhere in the building in the first place.
Even so, members of the Trump administration plainly believe that adopting the president’s “never back down” approach will pay political dividends.
The immigration debate has become partly a battle of visual images
The Padilla episode plainly helps Democrats make their case that the Trump administration is prone to repressive tactics.
But the image of the senator on the ground also has to compete, in a political sense, with some of the equally compelling images of disorder in Los Angeles.
Images of anti-ICE protesters using Molotov cocktails, carrying Mexican flags and setting fire to vehicles have been potent, especially with audiences that lean to the right.
The latter images have been used to make the case that Democrats are soft on immigration — and on crime, especially if it relates to protests for causes they believe in.
Those images, in turn, feed the belief that Trump is justified in mobilizing troops to restore order.
Could the political tide turn on immigration?
Immigration was Trump’s strongest issue in the general election campaign against Harris last year. He argued that former President Biden had been far too lax on the issue, in effect facilitating a massive influx at the southern border.
Voters have mostly approved of Trump’s efforts on border security while in office, as unauthorized crossings have fallen precipitously. But his poll ratings on immigration writ large are much more mixed.
It’s plausible that the apparent discrepancy stems from a public disquiet with some of the tactics used by immigration agents, and with Trump’s often fractious attitude toward the courts when they rule against him.
An Economist/YouGov poll this week highlighted the split. It found that 47 percent of surveyed Americans believe Trump’s approach to immigration it too harsh, 40 percent believe it is about right, and 7 percent believe it is too soft.
The same poll found 87 percent of surveyed Americans supporting the deportation of migrants without legal status who have committed violent crimes — but 61 percent opposed to deportations of those who had not committed violent crimes.
In short, the politics of immigration is more nuanced and more changeable than hard-liners on either side make it appear.
