Calls grow for Kristi Noem to resign in the wake of Padilla incident

California Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell leads calls for Homeland Security Secretary to step down after senator forcibly removed from her press conference on Thursday

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is facing calls to resign after California Democratic Senator Alex Padilla was forcibly removed from her press conference in Los Angeles on Thursday and pinned to the floor.

The incident sparked uproar, with California Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell among those calling for Noem’s resignation.

“Kristi Noem should resign for what has happened under her watch,” Swalwell told NewsNation’s Joe Khalil.

“No one asked for this. We were promised violent criminals would be deported. Instead, they deported a four-year-old American citizen battling cancer, they arrested a U.S. Marshal over the weekend, a U.S. citizen and now a U.S. senator, the second member of Congress in 45 days who’s been arrested.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem holds a news conference regarding the recent protests in Los Angeles on June 12 2025 (AP)

Swalwell was incorrect to say that Padilla was arrested. As the senator clarified at his own press conference, he was handcuffed but not arrested or detained. But the incident sparked broad outrage among Democrats.

Noem was speaking in the California city after a week of unrest that has seen residents rise up to protest raids on undocumented migrants by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, prompting President Donald Trump to send in 4,000 members of the National Guard and 700 Marines despite the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass.

“We are not going away,” Noem declared at the event. “We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.”

At that point, Padilla, who had been witnessing her remarks, shouted: “I’m Senator Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary. Because the fact of the matter is, a half dozen... Hands off!” He was duly swarmed by Secret Service and FBI agents and bundled out of the room.

“I came to the press conference to hear what she had to say, to see if I could learn any new additional information,” Padilla told reporters shortly after being released. “I was there peacefully. At one point, I had a question and so I began to ask a question. I was almost immediately forcibly removed from the room.”

“No one asked for this. It’s chaos, and her agents are running around, masked like 1800s bank robbers, you know, or the KGB officers in Russia. This is not what America looks like. So she should come to Congress. They should take the masks off, and they should stop terrorizing families.”

California Democratic Senator Alex Padilla is foribly removed from Noem’s press conference on the anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles (AFP/Getty)

White House Director of Communications Steven Cheung immediately retaliated against Swalwell on X with a disparaging nickname and an oblique reference to his alleged involvement with a suspected Chinese spy a decade ago.

“Eric Swallows is taking orders from Fang Fang and spewing lies because he's an absolute joke of a person who is unserious about his job,” Cheung wrote. “These are the rantings of either a madman or a puppet.”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt likewise accused Padilla of being “childish”, claiming he had “crashed” the press conference and been “recklessly lunging” at Noem when he was restrained.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer saw it differently, saying the “manhandling” of the senator had “sickened my stomach” and declaring: “We need immediate answers to what the hell went on.”

California Gov. Newsom said Padilla’s treatment was “outrageous, dictatorial, and shameful” and added: “Trump and his shock troops are out of control.”

Padilla’s treatment by law enforcement seeking to protect Noem has provoked an outcry (AP)

While their fellow Democrats Sylvia Garcia, Yassamin Ansari, and Madeleine Dean all told The Independent of their shock and disgust over the Padilla episode, the view on the other side of the aisle was, unsurprisingly, much closer to that of the West Wing.

“I think he should be charged. He should be prosecuted,” Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said of Padilla in conversation with NewsNation.

“He came in very aggressively, and then he actually fought police. He actually resisted arrest and was aggressively refused to leave.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson’s response was equally predictable when he told reporters: “The Democrat Party is on the wrong side. They’re defending lawbreakers and now they’re acting like lawbreakers themselves.”