During remarks on the Senate floor Tuesday, Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) spoke about President Trump federalizing the National Guard to 'liberate' Los Angeles amid anti-ICE protests.
00:00Mr. President, it's important for me for this body to know that over the last two weeks in Los Angeles, my hometown, that we've seen masked federal agents in tactical gear ordered into our communities.
00:22We've seen a disturbing pattern of increasingly extreme and cruel immigration enforcement operations targeting nonviolent people at places of worship, at schools, in courthouses, all to meet an arbitrary quota.
00:45Now we're seeing President Trump federalize National Guard troops and deploy them without the governor's consent.
00:57Active duty Marines now being deployed, escalating tensions in our city.
01:05And it's important to note all this without coordination with state and local law enforcement.
01:12And despite repeated requests for the justification for these extreme actions, and after months and months of little to no response from the administration on their aggressive and theatrical immigration raids,
01:28the Trump administration has done everything in their power but to provide transparency to the American people about their mission in Los Angeles.
01:39And so last week, I chose to go home to try to get answers from the administration as they are literally militarizing our city.
01:51And I want to share what I learned.
01:54I want to share what I heard because it should shock the conscience of our country.
02:00Now, one of the first items on my schedule last Thursday was a meeting and a briefing with General Guillaume, the four-star general in charge of U.S. Northern Command.
02:14Many of you know him.
02:17The briefing was scheduled at the Federal Building in West Los Angeles, where they're overseeing these military operations.
02:24Now, colleagues, when the United States military is deployed domestically, when our troops are deployed against the wishes of the governor for the first time since 1965,
02:40against the wishes of the local mayor, and even against the wishes of local law enforcement, both the police chief and the sheriff,
02:49we are in unchartered territory.
02:54So in my effort to do my duty to conduct congressional oversight and to try to get answers from the Department of Defense that state and local officials were not receiving,
03:08I went to the Federal Building in West Los Angeles.
03:11I was met at the entrance, at the entrance, by a National Guardsman and an FBI agent who escorted me through security screening and up to a conference room for my scheduled briefing.
03:29While waiting for my scheduled briefing with General Guillaume, I learned that Homeland Security Secretary Noem was holding a press conference literally just down the hall.
03:44And that press conference was causing my briefing to be delayed.
03:47The thought occurred to me that, well, maybe I could attend this press conference and listen in, just listen, in the hopes of hearing Secretary Noem provide some new information that could help us make sense of what was happening.
04:05I didn't just get up and go. I asked, and was escorted by the National Guardsman and the FBI agent into the press conference.
04:19They opened the door for me. They accompanied me into the press briefing room.
04:26And they stood next to me as I stood there for a while, listening.
04:31And at one point, the United States Secretary of Homeland Security said that the purpose of federal law enforcement and the purpose of the United States military was to, quote,
04:48liberate Los Angeles from our governor and our mayor, to somehow liberate us from the very people that we democratically elected to lead our city and our state.
05:07Colleagues, let that fundamentally un-American mission statement sink in.
05:13That is not a mission focused on public safety.
05:20And that simply is not and cannot be the mission of federal law enforcement and the United States military.
05:31To my colleagues on both sides of the aisle,
05:35are we truly prepared to live in a country where the president can deploy the armed forces
05:43to decide which duly elected governors and mayors should be allowed to lead their constituents?
05:51Is that really the precedent that we're okay with setting?
05:55As Secretary Noem herself said last year when she was governor of North Dakota,
06:04at the time she said, quote,
06:05if Joe Biden federalizes the National Guard,
06:08that would be a direct attack on states' rights.
