When U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla was forcibly removed from a news conference held by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, it was almost as if Donald Trump\u2019s most well-worn talking point came to life: A bad hombre tried to go after a white American. All Padilla did was identify himself and try to question Noem about the immigration raids across Southern California that have led to protests and terror. Instead, federal agents pushed the senator into a hallway, forced him to the ground and handcuffed him before he was released.<\/p>\n
He and Noem talked privately afterward, yet she claimed to reporters that Padilla \u201clung[ed]\u201d at her despite them being far apart and video showing no evidence to back up her laughable assertion. The claim was in keeping with Noem\u2019s pronouncements this week. On Tuesday, she accused Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum of encouraging violent protests in L.A. when the president actually called for calm.<\/p>\n
The manhandling of Padilla on Thursday and his subsequent depiction by conservatives as a modern-day Pancho Villa isn\u2019t surprising one bit. Trashing people of Mexican heritage has been one of Trump\u2019s most successful electoral planks \u2014 don\u2019t forget that he kicked off his 2016 presidential campaigns by proclaiming Mexican immigrants to be \u201crapists\u201d and drug smugglers \u2014 because he knows it works. You could be a newcomer from Jalisco, you could be someone whose ancestors put down roots before the Mayflower, it doesn\u2019t matter: For centuries, the default stance in this country is to look at anyone with family ties to our neighbor to the south with skepticism, if not outright hate.<\/p>\n
It was the driving force behind the Mexican-American War and subsequent robbing of land from the Mexicans who decided to stay in the conquered territory. It was the basis for the legal segregation of Mexicans across the American Southwest in the first half of the 20th century and continues to fuel stereotypes of oversexed women and criminal men that still live on mainstream and social media.
\nA man holds a Mexican flag at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles on June 8, 2025.
\n(Jason Armond \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
These anti-Mexican sentiments are why California voters passed a slew of xenophobic local and state measures in the 1980s and 1990s when the state\u2019s demographics began to dramatically change. Conservative politicians and pundits alike claimed Mexico was trying to reclaim the American Southwest and called the conspiracy the \u201cReconquista,\u201d after the centuries-long push by Spaniards to take back the Iberian Peninsula from the Moors during the Middle Ages.<\/p>\n
The echoes of that era continue to reverberate in MAGAland. It\u2019s why Trump went on social media to describe L.A. as a city besieged by a \u201cMigrant Invasion\u201d when people began to rally against all the immigration raids that kicked off last week and led to his draconian deployment of the National Guard and Marines to L.A. as if we were Fallouja in the Iraq war. It\u2019s what led the White House\u2019s Instagram account Wednesday to share the image of a stern-looking Uncle Sam putting up a poster stating \u201cHelp your country … and yourself\u201d above the slogan \u201cReport All Foreign Invaders\u201d and a telephone number for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s what led U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli to post a photo on his official social media account of SEIU California President David Huerta roughed up and in handcuffs after he was arrested for allegedly blocking the path of ICE agents trying to serve a search warrant on a factory in the Garment District. It\u2019s why Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called in the National Guard before planned protests in San Antonio, one of the cradles of Latino political power in the United States and the home of the Alamo. It\u2019s why there are reports that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wants to rename a naval ship honoring Chicano legend Cesar Chavez and has announced that the only U.S. military base named after a Latino, Ft. Cavazos in Texas, will drop its name.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s what\u2019s driving all the rabid responses to activists waving the Mexican flag. Vice President JD Vance described protesters as \u201cinsurrectionists carrying foreign flags\u201d on social media. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller \u2014 Trump\u2019s longtime anti-immigrant Iago \u2014 described L.A. as \u201coccupied territory.\u201d The president slimed protesters as \u201canimals\u201d and \u201cforeign enemies.\u201d In an address to Army soldiers prescreened for looks and loyalty at Ft. Bragg in North Carolina this week, he vowed, \u201cThe only flag that will wave triumphant over the city of Los Angeles is the American flag.\u201d<\/p>\n
The undue obsession with a piece of red, green and white cloth betrays this deep-rooted fear by Americans that we Mexicans are fundamentally invaders. And to some, that idea sure seems to be true. Latinos are now the largest minority group in the U.S., a plurality in California and nearly a majority in L.A. and L.A. County \u2014 and Mexicans make up the largest segment of all those populations by far.
\nLupe Padilla, mother of then-Los Angeles City Councilman and current U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, wipes a tear away as they watch a video presentation of his career during his last City Council meeting in 2006.
\n(Gary Friedman \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
The truth of this demographic Reconquista, as I\u2019ve been writing for a quarter of a century, is far more mundane. The so-called invading force of my generation assimilated to the point where our kids are named Brandon and Ashley in all sorts of spellings. The young adults and teenagers on the street wrapping themselves in the Mexican flag right now are chanting against ICE in English and blasting \u201cThey Not Like Us.\u201d More than a few of the National Guard troops, police officers and Homeland Security officers those young Latino activists were heckling have Latino surnames on their uniforms, when they show any identification at all. Hell, enough Mexican Americans voted for Trump that they arguably swung the election to him.<\/p>\n
Mexicans assimilate into the United States, a fact too many Americans will never believe no matter how many American flags we may wave. The best personification of this reality is Sen. Padilla. This son of Mexican immigrants grew up in working-class Pacoima and went to MIT before returning home to help found a political machine that gave a voice to Latinos in the San Fernando Valley that they never had. He was the first Latino president of the L.A. City Council, served in both chambers of the state Legislature and also as California\u2019s secretary of state before becoming California\u2019s first Latino U.S. senator.<\/p>\n
When I met Padilla for lunch last year at my wife\u2019s store in Santa Ana \u2014 in Calle Cuatro, the city\u2019s historic Latino district, where now we can see the National Guard down the street blocking off a part of it \u2014 he struck me as the goody-two-shoes those who have worked with him have always portrayed him to be. In fact, that was always a progressive critique of him: He was too nice to properly stand up to the Trump administration. That\u2019s what makes Padilla\u2019s ejection especially outrageous. He\u2019s California\u2019s senior California U.S. senator, someone with enough of a security clearance to be was in the same federal building where Noem was holding her press conference because he had a previous meeting with US Northern Command\u2019s General Gregory Guillot.<\/p>\n
Then again, Noem probably thought Padilla was just another Mexican. Not anymore. If anything, conservatives should be more afraid of Mexicans now than ever. Because if a nice Mexican such as Alex Padilla could be fed up with hate against us enough to get tossed around by the feds in the name of preserving democracy, anyone can. May we all be bad hombres now.<\/p>\n
Introduction to the Controversy When U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla was forcibly removed from a news conference held by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, it was almost as if Donald Trump\u2019s most well-worn talking point came to life: A bad hombre tried to go after a white American. All Padilla did was identify himself and try […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16701,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16700","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-wellness"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/30f1b62\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/3786x1988+0+268\/resize\/1200x630!\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F91%2Fe9%2Fb664752541f4b6bc4b6ecf4aa85b%2F1510124-me-dhs-press-conference-lrj-002.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16700"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16700"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16702,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16700\/revisions\/16702"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}