Sham Immigration Subcommittee Hearing

On November 19, 2025, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), spoke at Senate Republicans’ subcommittee hearing titled, “ICE Under Fire: The Radical Left’s Crusade Against Immigration Enforcement.”

Padilla Walks Out of Republican Immigration Hearing

Without any government witnesses to testify or data to back up the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) claims of a large spike in assaults on its officers and agents, Senator Padilla reiterated that the hearing was “not a serious attempt to protect law enforcement” or conduct oversight.

Padilla has submitted requests to DHS for months to back up their statements of a “500%,” “1,000%,” and now “8,000%” increase in assaults and death threats against their agents and officers, but DHS has refused to provide the underlying data.

Select portions of Padilla’s remarks:

…today’s hearing is not a serious attempt to protect law enforcement.

It’s designed to fuel the propaganda machine and encourage even more brutal immigration enforcement operations.

It’s designed to cover up for the fact that after President Trump pledged to go after the worst of the worst, this we do know from DHS statistics: over 70 percent of those currently detained in ICE custody have no criminal record.

If they were simply focused on those truly dangerous, violent criminals, there would be no objection, there would be no debate, there would be no discussion. But the reality is far from their claims.

At the same time, what we are seeing every day is new acts of brutality and misuse of force in communities across the country.

But my guess is that today, you won’t be hearing about the Department of Homeland Security’s violent take downs of peaceful, hardworking long-term immigrants who don’t have that violent criminal record that the Administration wants you to believe.

And I’m not just making this up. There’s case after case, including a deaf DACA recipient who had his hands cuffed and his phone taken away so he couldn’t communicate as he was shoved into the back of a car.

You won’t hear about the journalists who were threatened and assaulted, one so severely in New York they had to be hospitalized.

You won’t hear about the clergy being shot in the head with a pepper ball or arrested for attempting to administer the sacrament of communion to the faithful at a detention facility.

And you won’t hear about the 170 American citizens — there’s probably more, but that’s what’s been documented — caught up in these chaotic immigration raids. American citizens caught up in these raids.

Even as Secretary Noem lies and … when she says that no American citizens have been detained, every week, we read new reports about another American who’s had their neck kneeled on, their door blown off, or their window smashed, and even a pregnant woman in Florida — a United States citizen — who was thrown to the ground during an arrest, and who later miscarried. This is happening every day across the country.

Masked agents have become so emboldened that even a Reagan-appointed federal judge recently wrote, and I’ll quote: “In all our history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police … carrying on in this fashion.”

Now, this Administration ignores the fundamental rights to due process every day as it carries out this authoritarian enforcement agenda, and instead has replaced it with the idea that if you look or talk a certain way, that’s enough for you to be detained or even deported before you have a day in court.

That’s not just morally wrong; it’s an attack on our fundamental liberties and the rule of law in the United States of America.

But again, Republicans don’t want to discuss any of this. Why? Out of fear of crossing the President and his outrage machine.

Americans have had enough.

They’re sick of masked agents disrespecting daycares, schools, and churches, disappearing loved ones, and intimidating our communities.

Americans are demanding that we do something.

So, Mr. Chairman, it’s clear to me that this hearing will not be a serious or constructive conversation.

And for that reason, I refuse to give oxygen to the fire of disinformation and propaganda that this hearing was set up to ignite.

And I refuse to be part of this charade.