Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem vowed to "liberate" Los Angeles during a press conference on Thursday, which took a dramatic turn when federal agents forcibly removed a Democratic U.S. senator from the room, pinned him to the ground and placed him in handcuffs.
Senator Alex Padilla of California was forcibly ejected after he tried to ask Noem a question during her press conference in Los Angeles, video of the scene shared by his office showed. Noem said later Padilla had not identified himself as a senator during the scuffle, but the video clearly shows him doing so.
"I'm Sen. Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary," he shouted in a halting voice.
Scuffling with officers outside the room, he can be heard bellowing, "Hands off!" He is later seen on his knees and then pushed to the ground and handcuffed in a hallway, with several officers atop him.
The shocking scene of a U.S. senator being aggressively removed from a Cabinet secretary's news conference prompted immediate outrage from his Democratic colleagues. Images and video of the scuffle ricocheted through the halls of Congress, where stunned lawmakers demanded an immediate investigation and characterized the episode as another in a line of mounting threats to democracy by President Donald Trump's administration.
Noem was in the city after days of protests against federal immigration raids by the Trump administration.
Trump, a Republican, has deployed the National Guard and the Marines, despite the objections of the state's Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, and other officials, who say the move is unnecessary.
Trump has defended his decision, saying if he had not done so the city would be in flames. The protests so far have been mostly peaceful, punctuated by incidents of violence and restricted to a few city blocks. The mayor of Los Angeles has also imposed a night-time curfew in parts of the city.
"We're going to stay here and build our operations until we make sure we liberate the city of Los Angeles," Noem said.
In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said Padilla "chose disrespectful political theater and interrupted a live news conference." They claimed erroneously that Padilla did not identify himself and said Secret Service believed him to be an attacker.
"Padilla was told repeatedly to back away and did not comply with officers' repeated commands," the statement said, adding that "officers acted appropriately."
Noem and Padilla ended up meeting for 15 minutes to discuss his concerns over the immigration raids, the department said.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said what he saw "sickened my stomach."
"We need immediate answers to what the hell went on," the New York senator said from the Senate floor. "It's despicable, it's disgusting, it's so un-American."
Emerging afterward, Padilla said he was demanding answers about the Trump administration's "increasingly extreme immigration enforcement actions" from Noem when he was removed. He said he and his colleagues had received little to no response to their questions in recent weeks, so he attended the briefing for more information.
"If this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question ... I can only imagine what they are doing to farmworkers, to cooks, to day laborers throughout the Los Angeles community, and throughout California and throughout the country," he said.
Some 700 U.S. Marines will be on the streets of the city by Thursday or Friday, the military has said, to support up to 4,000 National Guard troops in protecting federal property and federal agents, including on immigration raids.
The state of California is seeking a federal court order later today that would stop troops from "patrolling the streets of Los Angeles" and limit their role to protecting federal personnel and property. California's lawsuit ultimately seeks to rescind Trump's order to deploy the National Guard to the area.
In a court filing on Thursday, California argued that the federal government has already violated the law by having National Guard troops assist ICE agents in immigration raids.
Noem said federal officers have arrested more than 1,500 people and that the department has "tens of thousands of targets" in the region.
She said the Internal Revenue Service was investigating whether there are financial links between the protests and political advocacy groups, something of which there has been little evidence.
