Yesterday was, by his own admission, a shocking day for Senator Alex Padilla. It wasn’t just that he was physically detained after confronting Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, or that he quickly became a leading figure in the Democratic party’s resistance to Donald Trump’s deportation regime. It was the little things, too—like the person who ran down the hall to yell at law enforcement officers to uncuff him.
“Of all people, Corey Lewandowski,” Padilla recalled, referencing Trump’s longtime loyalist who is now a top DHS adviser. “He’s the one trying to rein in the agents telling them to stop, to release me, to remove the handcuffs, offering me a cup of coffee.” It was, he added, “one of the most surreal things that’s ever happened in my life.”
In an interview with The Bulwark some 24 hours after he was manhandled and cuffed, Padilla was sharply critical of those who sought to malign his actions.
He scoffed at the notion that he barged in or lunged at Noem: “I had been there for five, almost 10 minutes.”
He ridiculed the idea that he hadn’t identified himself: “You saw the video, I’m shouting, ‘I’m Senator Alex Padilla and I have a question.’ The shirt that I’m wearing had the Senate seal on the chest.”
He elaborated on why he was in the building to begin with: “I was [there] for a scheduled briefing with representatives of Northern Command to get more information” and Noem’s press conference was “literally a couple of doors down.”
And he responded to critics, like Stephen A. Smith, who chastised him for trying to produce a spectacle. “They're very evasive. They refuse to share. They refuse to commit. . . . I thought maybe this is an opportunity to ask a question directly. I’m doing my job and this is how they react.”
There is a lot, lot more that Padilla offered, including a plea to fellow Democrats to more forcefully take on the immigration debate.
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