Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) made an emotional statement on the Senator’s floor on Tuesday, recounting the forced removal from a press conference last week when Homeland Security Secretary Cristo Noem urged his Senate colleagues to “wake up.”
Padilla began by explaining how it all started: Advanced America. The California Senator said he decided to be in Los Angeles last week after seeing public immigrant raids at work and military presence on the streets of his hometown.
Padilla said his scheduled meeting was delayed due to a press conference held down the hall from where he was, while waiting for General Gregory Guillot, who leads the Joint Task Force 51 to revitalize more than 4,000 National Guard members and 700 Marines, to explain.
“I wasn’t just standing up,” Padilla recalled, saying he listened to her press conference and hoped to better understand Norm and her plans in Los Angeles. “I was escorted by the National Guard and FBI agents inquired at the press conference and they opened the door for me.
But Padilla said he was Noem’s comment on the Trump administration’s wish to “free” the city of Los Angeles from the “socialists and nasty leadership” of the Transuean administration.
“To free us from the very people democratically elected to lead cities and states, let our colleagues sink a fundamentally non-American mission statement,” appealed Padilla. “It’s not a mission focused on public safety, and it’s not just a mission of federal law enforcement and the US military, and it can’t.”
Padilla, a native of the San Fernando Valley and son of Mexican immigrants, told other senators she left her engineering career after graduating from MIT after protesting anti-immigration rhetoric by California Governor Pete Wilson and Prop. 187 in 1994.
The former California Secretary also said he was actively escorted from the press conference.
“I was first pressed against the ground on my lap, then my chest was flattened, handcuffed, and I marched through the hallways repeatedly to see why I was being held. “I hope there’s no moment like this.”
Just as Padilla argued that President Donald Trump was using California and immigrants as scapegoats to deflect Americans from the “bad week” following the public spitting of Elon Musk and the Customs War, the senator ominously warned that US soldiers were marching through other cities and states.
“If you really think this is about immigration and immigration, it’s time to wake up,” Padilla said. “If Donald Trump can bypass the governor and activate the National Guard and protest immigrant rights, he can do that to curb your rights too.”
The California Senator also appealed to Senate colleagues to speak out as the Senate is working to come up with his own version of President Trump’s budget proposal.
“No one will redeem America, but Americans. “If this administration is afraid of one of the senators asking questions, your colleagues imagine the voices of tens of millions of Americans can protest peacefully.”
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