06/12/2025 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 06/12/2025 16:31
WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.) gave a speech on the Senate floor defending his friend and colleague U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) shortly after Senator Padilla was violently forced out of a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) press conference, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed in his hometown of Los Angeles.
"If a Senator of the United States who identifies himself as a senator - in at least the video I just saw - gets handled this way, gets thrown to the ground and handcuffed, what is happening to those who have no such title or voice, if this gentle and decent and caring man is treated this way, what is happening along the margins, in the dark spaces, in the places we cannot see?" said Senator Coons. "So Mr. President, I call on my Republican friends and colleagues to look hard at this moment and say, 'what comes next?'"
A transcript of Senator Coons' comments is available below.
WATCH HERE.
Senator Coons: Mr. President, having just viewed a video of my friend and colleague, Senator Alex Padilla, being manhandled, thrown to the ground and handcuffed, after identifying himself as Senator Alex Padilla and attempting to ask a question of the Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, in Los Angeles, I am shaken, I am angry, and I am gravely concerned about our path forward in this body and our nation.
Democracy is a gift hard won and hard earned by the sacrifice of millions who have served, fought, and died. Some in moments of tumult and challenge on the beaches of Normandy, on the fields of Gettysburg. From the very beginning of our nation to this moment, millions of Americans have stepped forward and said, I will risk it all so that my children and those I do not know can live free lives, knowing the burdens of tyranny, knowing what it meant to live under the heel of a king, our forefathers risked everything.
In nations around the world that I have visited on your behalf as a senator, people yearning for freedom, and people recently free, have come and spoken about how much the American example means to them. Earlier this year, I was at a global security conference, concerned about what was happening in our nation, about our division and the dialogue, and I heard three young parliamentarians from other countries talk about how hard they were working.
Part of our job, Mr. Speaker, as senators is to ask hard questions, is to pose challenges, is to test the cabinet of the President, to visit federal facilities, to ask questions that are sometimes uncomfortable or unwelcome. Just this week, I was at three committee hearings and had three members of the cabinet in front of me. Did they want to answer my questions? Probably not. But they did.
If a Senator of the United States who identifies himself as a senator - in at least the video I just saw - gets handled this way, gets thrown to the ground and handcuffed, what is happening to those who have no such title or voice, if this gentle and decent and caring man is treated this way, what is happening along the margins, in the dark spaces, in the places we cannot see?
So Mr. President, I call on my Republican friends and colleagues to look hard at this moment and say, 'what comes next?' What comes next? Are we to be at risk of arrest if we threaten to ask a question or deign to interrupt? Is our very service here as senators hanging in the balance? In this moment, as we all learn more of the facts of what happened in Los Angeles, the future of what will happen here in our country and in the world will wait on your answer.
Was this an over-response? Was this a misuse of force? Was this a disrespect of the very Senate itself? Is this a moment when, as our founders who wrote the Federalist Papers dreamed, my colleagues in the Senate will show their loyalty to the role, to the check and balance, to the independence of the Senate more than they will show their loyalty to their party and their president and demand an answer, an apology, and a different path forward.
Or is this a moment when all of us will watch this video of our friend, a member of the Judiciary Committee; a representative - a senator - of Los Angeles in the state of California, being roughly mishandled, and say, 'too bad, at least it wasn't me.' If we answer this moment with silence, we will be damned, and our children and the world will say they didn't really mean it.
The members of my family who served in the U.S. military knew that signing on that line meant being willing to give everything, and I believe, and have been told, that they understood that service to be in service of freedom; not in service of any particular president or party, any particular state or moment, but in service of democracy.
Democracy is a fragile flower, and around the world, people look to what we do to know what they should do. There are petty, tinpot dictators, authoritarians, and strong men around the world who will watch this video and be encouraged and think this is the way to silence their critics.
I can't imagine a member of this chamber who knows Alex Padilla, who has had the blessing of sitting with him in moments when he's asked questions or engaged in discourse, who thinks of him as anything other than a reasoned, reasonable, mild-mannered senator.
But even if he were not, even if he were outspoken, loud, aggressive, annoying; the title 'senator' and the role that we have should entitle him to ask a question at a press conference. If the result is this mistreatment, heaven help us all. Heaven help our democracy.
With that, I yield the floor.