Alex Padilla, Democrat of California, was shoved out of a room and handcuffed after he disrupted Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, during a news conference.
Senator Alex Padilla, Democrat of California, was forcibly removed on Thursday from a news conference being held by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, and handcuffed after he pushed past guards at a federal building in West Los Angeles.
“Sir! Sir! Hands off!” Mr. Padilla, 52, shouted as federal agents tried to muscle him out of the room where Ms. Noem was speaking inside a government office building about 15 miles west of downtown Los Angeles. “I am Senator Alex Padilla. I have a question for the secretary.”
As Mr. Padilla — an M.I.T. graduate, the son of Mexican immigrants and a Los Angeles native — began questioning the authenticity of a bank of mug shots behind Ms. Noem, agents shoved him out of the room, told him to drop to his knees in a hallway and handcuffed him, based on videos taken by Mr. Padilla’s office and a Fox News reporter.
A small group of reporters pivoted their cameras toward the disruption. Other national and local journalists were forced to wait outside the building after officials blocked access to the news conference shortly before the event began.
In the tense hyperpartisanship of the moment, the incident quickly swelled into a cause celebre for both parties. Democratic senators, House members and governors rushed to denounce the treatment of a sitting senator, framing it as the latest escalation in authoritarian actions by the Trump administration. It came after the indictment on Tuesday of Representative LaMonica McIver of New Jersey and the arrest of Ras Baraka, the mayor of Newark, after both tried to visit a new immigration detention facility in the city.
