After hearing hours of heartbreaking stories of families victimized by criminally violent illegal immigrants, Democrats at Thursday’s Capitol Hill hearing on the devastating policies of sanctuary states tried to manufacture a martyr out of grandstanding Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., in their war on the rule of law.
Padilla had been “forcibly” removed from a Department of Homeland Security press conference in Los Angeles in which Secretary Kristi Noem was addressing the anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement riots. Video shows an uninvited and unannounced Padilla disrupting the event, yelling about his opposition to President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement efforts, and at one point lunging at Noem. Not recognizing the senator, U.S. Secret Service agents removed the leftist senator from the conference room and started to handcuff him before he identified himself.
Padilla’s handlers immediately pushed the video out and he held a hasty press conference outside the federal building where the DHS presser was taking place. In short order, the grandstanding senator was appearing on accomplice media outlets everywhere declaring that his First Amendment rights had been violated.
That assertion is as absurd as Padilla’s made-for-TV disorderly conduct was staged.
And dangerous.
In an era of terrifying political violence in which 55 percent of liberal-leaning Americans believe its justifiable to assassinate Trump and administration officials, Padilla created a disturbance in his attempt to steal the spotlight at Noem’s press conference. But Democrats painted Padilla as another “victim” — this time a U.S. senator — of the president they have falsely vilified as a dictator for enforcing the law.
‘Shocks the Conscience’
Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee are wringing every bit of propaganda they can out of the Padilla incident, which curiously went down during Thursday’s hot-seat event in D.C., titled, “A Hearing with Sanctuary State Governors.”
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, one of three “sanctuary” governors called to testify, expressed her “absolute outrage” over Padilla’s removal from the DHS press conference he disrupted.
“Regardless of what anyone does, to have someone like that treated like a common criminal, as if he was a threat … shocks the conscience,” Hochul told the Republican-led committee. “And as a former member of this body, I hope we’ll all stand up and condemn this and say, ‘We can do better.’”
Hochul didn’t seem as shocked by the horrific crimes committed by immigrants in New York or fellow blue states Illinois and Minnesota, represented at the hearing by their Democrat governors, J.B. Pritzker and Tim Walz.
The unpopular Hochul, underwater in the polls as she prepares her 2026 reelection run, had a difficult time remembering New York-supported illegal immigrants like Sebastian Zapeta-Calil. He’s been charged with burning alive a woman he found sleeping on a New York subway.
“This is in Kathy Hochul’s New York, and as I’m sure you are aware, and I’ll remind you, that ICE issued an order to detain this violent criminal, but that was rejected by New York officials due to sanctuary state laws,” committee member Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican, told the governor.
In January, Hochul reauthorized an executive order barring New York law enforcement officers from using “resources, equipment or personnel for the purpose of detecting and apprehending any individual suspected or wanted only for violating a civil immigration offense. Law enforcement officers have no authority to take any police action solely because the person is an undocumented alien. This includes identifying, questioning, detaining, or demanding to inspect federal immigration documents.”
‘Maybe They Set This Up’
You’ll excuse Joe Abraham for thinking Padilla’s viral moment nothing more than a political stunt. Abraham’s 20-year-old daughter, Katie Abraham, and her friend, 21-year-old Chloe Polzin, died from injuries sustained in a car crash near the campus of the University of Illinois in Urbana in January. Katie’s killer, according to police, is Julio Cucul-Bol, a 29-year-old Guatemalan national. The previously-deported illegal immigrant, was allegedly drunk when he slammed his SUV into the driver’s side of the vehicle Katie’s friend was driving as it was stopped at a red light.
Cucul-Bol, who law enforcement officials said immediately fled the scene and was later apprehended heading toward the Mexican border, is now facing multiple felony charges.
Joe Abraham said the Democrats on the committee made sure to show the video of Padilla being removed from the Los Angeles press event.
“The first thing I thought was, ‘Wow, look at this! … I think maybe they set this up so they could derail the committee,’” the grieving father told me Friday on the Dan O’Donnell Show on WISN in Milwaukee.
Abraham attended Thursday’s hearing with his wife. Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., shared the details of Katie’s senseless death and Illinois sanctuary policies surrounding it.
Abraham said it was clear the governors and the Democrats on the committee didn’t want to talk about Katie and the other victims of the illegal immigration invasion and sanctuary policies of the previous four years. They did want a political victim. The best they could do was Political Stunt Padilla.
‘She was Completely Disappeared’
While Hochul and others decried Padilla’s handcuffing, Comer said the sanctuary governors “handcuff law enforcement from doing their jobs, harbor predators, and call it ‘compassion.’”
“It’s NOT compassion, and it is costing lives, hurting Americans, and draining taxpayer money,” the chairman said in a press release following the hearing.
Even as he faces lawsuits on allegations of obstructing ICE operations, Pritzker insisted the state of Illinois is following the law.
As Democrats demand due process for criminals in the country illegally, Joe Abraham said his daughter didn’t receive that luxury. While Walz vilifies ICE agents as the “modern-day Gestapo” and fellow liberal politicians accuse federal immigration agents of “snatching” or “disappearing” illegal aliens, Abraham said he’s been sentenced to live the rest of his life without his youngest child.
“Katie didn’t get any due process. She was completely disappeared. She was completely snatched away from me,” he said in the radio interview. “All those words they keep saying. The difference is, I’ll never get her back again. I’ve lost her.”