Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) called for Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem to resign after Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) was forcibly removed and later handcuffed at her Thursday press conference in Los Angeles.
“Kristi Noem should resign for what has happened under her watch. No one asked for this. We were promised violent criminals would be deported. Instead, they deported a four-year-old American citizen battling cancer, they arrested a US Marshal over the weekend, a US citizen and now a US senator, the second member of Congress in 45 days, who's been arrested,” Swalwell said in a brief interview with NewsNation on Thursday.
“No one asked for this. It's chaos, and her agents are running around, masked like 1800-bank robber you know, suspects or the KGB officers in Russia. This is not what America looks like. So she should come to Congress. They should take the masks off, and they should stop terrorizing families,” the House Democrat told NewsNation’s Joe Khalil.
The Trump administration fired back at Swalwell, with the White House communications director Steven Cheung writing Thursday on X that the lawmaker is “spewing lies because he's an absolute joke of a person who is unserious about his job. These are the rantings of either a madman or a puppet."
Padilla tried to question Noem at a Thursday press conference. The senator identified himself and walked up to the front of the room to try and question the DHS secretary. Agents then grabbed and pushed him away. He was pushed through the door, forced to the ground and handcuffed.
The incident has infuriated Democrats in both chambers of Congress, with others, including Padilla’s seatmate Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), also calling for Noem to resign.
“He had every right as a member of the United States Senate to talk and be at an event that was open to the public and the press. Instead, he was manhandled by law enforcement, forced to the ground and handcuffed. This is an outrage,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said on Thursday.
The White House accused Padilla of seeking attention.
“Padilla embarrassed himself and his constituents with this immature, theater-kid stunt — but it’s telling that Democrats are more riled up about Padilla than they are about the violent riots and assaults on law enforcement in LA,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement.
Padilla, later on Thursday, said that “if this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question, I can only imagine what they’re doing to farmworkers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California and throughout the country.”
DHS said in a statement that the California senator “was told repeatedly to back away and did not comply with officers’ repeated commands.”
“@SecretService thought he was an attacker and officers acted appropriately,” DHS said, adding that Padilla and Noem had a 15-minute meeting after the incident.
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