By Richard Hernandez
The diametric polarity of current American politics went manifest late last week and all of this week as the Donald Trump Administration’s promised policy of immigration enforcement began in earnest in Southern California, following a three-month abeyance.
As first reported previously in the Sentinel, the Trump Administration’s intention had been to initiate strict immigration enforcement in California as early as March by massive round-ups of undocumented aliens in both San Bernardino and Riverside counties with the cooperation of local authorities before having the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Department of Homeland Security turn their attention to the far denser concentration of illegal aliens in Los Angeles County. The administration, however, at the last minute abandoned that plan when both San Bernardino County Sheriff Shannon Dicus and Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco signaled they would not countenance having their respective departments assist federal officers in any action that would leave local residents distrustful of or uncooperative with law enforcement.
Accordingly, federal authorities instead regeared, making preparations, which were massive in scope, to undertake the removal, within the next two years, of an estimated 2.2 million illegal aliens from California. As a matter of practicality and simple math, that effort most logically would be centered in Los Angeles County, immediately adjacent to San Bernardino County.
The final brick in the edifice of “Operation Alta California,” scheduled to begin June 2, was put in place with the installation of Bill Essayli, temporarily pending confirmation by the Senate, as U.S. Attorney for Central California.
That schedule was met, with more than a dozen U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency sweeps across Los Angeles on June 2, more than a score in Los Angeles County on June 3 and hundreds completed by June 6. Consequently, immigration enforcement was given a lesser emphasis in San Bernardino County in the same timeframe, though U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency agents were notably present in the cities of San Bernardino, Colton, Rialto and Ontario at that time.
Predictably the immigration sweeps quickly sparked national outrage from Democratic leaders in California and outside the state, the advocates for illegal immigrants and those who in general tout themselves as liberals and progressives. Many of those question the constitutionally and applicability of immigration law altogether. They believe the nation should have open borders. They believe the Trump Administration’s conception of law and order does not match their own. There are outspoken elements among them who consider Donald Trump to be a criminal and a racist and celebrate those in his administration as criminal and racist, as well.
The California legislature passed the California Values Act into law in 2017 with the approval of Senate Bill 54, asserting the enforcement of federal immigration law is contrary to the ethos of the Golden State. Together with the specific declarations by a multitude of California cities and a general declaration by the State of California that they are sanctuaries from federal immigration law, those in the overwhelmingly Democratic state legislature and string of governors going back for more than a decade have demonstrated themselves to be of a mindset consider the enforcement of federal immigration law to be both immoral and impermissible. Among the minority of Democrats who support securing the borders and following immigration law, ones who acknowledge that the previous Joseph Biden Administration had not been aggressively enforcing immigration law, there is yet a belief that the Trump Administration is breaking the law and endangering the safety of people by the manner in which it is conducting the raids, most particularly when they are putting people into custody who are, in fact, legally registered, in the country legally or are citizens. They have emphasized that many or even most of those caught up in the Trump Administration’s immigration dragnet are hardworking people arrested while they were at work and trying to support their families through what the vast majority of Americans consider to be honest employment. The Trump Administration should reserve its enforcement firepower for concentrating on “true criminals,” in their view.
This clashes directly with the way those in the Trump Administration see it. They point out that federal law, which existed well prior to the advent of even the first Trump Administration, holds that for foreign nationals to enter into and remain in the United States, they must not only register their presence but be granted a visa or other form of permission to be in the country. Those failing to do so, or those who have snuck into the country, are in violation of the law, they maintain, and are criminals. As illegal aliens, they are subject to arrest and deportation, those in favor of the current enforcement effort believe. They point out that the raids are not targeting those immigrants who came into the U.S. through the legal process and complied with the word and spirit of the law, at what was for them tremendous expense and bother. Those migrants coming into the country illegally or overstaying the time limits on their visas are criminals, straight out and simple, they say, and those who are maintain that the enforcement of the law is wrong or racist or illegal are intellectually dishonest, plain stupid or criminals themselves.
By June 4, there were massive shows of public resistance to the raids. Massive protests seemed to be materializing in the areas where workplace arrests were taking place or near federal buildings. The mystery about how this was taking place was cleared up when it was revealed that community groups advocating on behalf of illegal immigrants were using their own self-styled Rapid Response Network, which employs a succession of hotline via phone numbers those in Southern California are able to call to report sightings of federal officers, primarily ICE officers. Those managing the hotline then relay word to hundreds, indeed thousands, of activists with whom they are affiliated through cell phone contact, giving precise instructions and directions to where ICE is setting up or involved in actions.
Crowds got in the way of several ICE operations. In some instances, riot conditions took place or were on the brink of manifesting. Looting of some businesses in those areas occurred. Cars and then a fleet of delivery vans owned by one company were overturned and/or set afire.
On June 6, David Huerta, the president of the Service Employees International Union California. was arrested during a demonstration against ICE action at a workplace in downtown Los Angeles when he reported became physical, assaulting a law enforcement officer while smashing a gate screaming profanities in the direction of officers.
U.S. Attorney Essayli charged Huerta with conspiracy to impede an officer, a felony under federal law with a potential punishment of up to six years in prison.
Simultaneously, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, having learned of the Rapid Response Network, began exploring the possibilities that its use constituted a violation of the federal wire fraud statute and represented a device used in an act of conspiracy to obstruct justice. Essayli’s office made clear that if protesters are brought to the scene of an ICE raid where a legally-issued search warrant is being served and activists swarming around the agents or their vehicles in an effort to impede them, the FBI and federal marshals on hand are authorized to arrest them and the U.S. Attorney’s Office intends to pursue charges against them.
While the Democrats and advocates for the illegal aliens maintained that the Trump Administration was overreacting and taking the enforcement of immigration law too seriously, there were plenty of others who believe the protesters had overreacted to the Trump Administration initiative in California. That overreaction resulted in what may prove to be a critical defection, indeed set of defections, from the illegal alien support network in California.
Previously, there was a strong and seemingly unbridgeable divide between, on one hand, the federal government and its employees and agents looking to enforce immigration law and, on the other hand, California State and local officials ready to defy federal law. The California Values Act and the declarations by California cities that they were sanctuaries from federal law, along with the statements of law enforcement stalwarts such as Dicus and Bianco that they would side with Sacramento rather than Washington, D.C. when it came to rounding up illegal aliens left little prospect that the federal agents could count on support in their mission. As early as June 4, however, LAPD officers were reporting that people in the crowds at the protests where they had come to ensure peaceful demonstrations could take place were throwing bricks, rocks, flaming projectiles, Molotov cocktails, concrete, M-80s and quarter sticks of dynamite their way.
The 101 Freeway was twice shut down Sunday, June 8, when protesters on an overpass threw rocks, debris, and M-80 explosives at California Highway Patrol officers and vehicles below them.
By June 5 Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, a Democrat, was promulgating that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were conducting operations at schools, hospital emergency rooms and homeless shelters.
The Department of Homeland Security immediately responded, calling what Bass had said, “blatantly false,” and challenging the mayor to provide proof to support her assertion and identify the source of her information. When Bass was unable to identify any schools, hospitals or homeless shelter where either the Department of Homeland Security or ICE had carried out operations, Bass retracted her statement and a member of her staff said she had relied on information pertaining to the illegal alien roundups posed through the Rapid Response Network. This intensified Essayli’s scrutiny of the Rapid Response Network.
True to precedent, other California Democrat politicians were inserting themselves into the controversy, lodging protests against the enforcement of the law in ways that skirted lesser laws relating to maintaining the public peace. Once again, depending on which side of the political divide the observer is on, those politicians came across as noble crusaders on behalf of illegal immigration or scofflaws themselves.
Congresswoman Norma Torres, who represents California’s 35th Congressional District, which includes the southwestern extension of San Bernardino County, was among, she said, a four-member “peaceful Congressional delegation oversight visit to the Roybal Federal Building in Los Angeles on June 7, 2025… to observe and bear witness to the conditions and treatment of individuals in federal immigration custody. The visit was prompted by reports of violent encounters involving ICE agents and unidentified bystanders during raids at multiple locations in Los Angeles County, as well as reports of dangerous overcrowding at the facility.”
According to Torres, she and the other three members of Congress arrived at the Roybal Building at 8:30 am and “requested an invitation to enter and be given a briefing. At no point did we request entry for anyone other than members, and we clearly displayed our Congressional Member identification. Rather than accommodating the request, as required under law, we were denied access to the facility under a false pretext. Contrary to ICE’s public claim that over 1,000 protesters were present, this was a small, peaceful delegation.”
Torres maintains that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement made a “false characterization” of the circumstances surrounding the visit “designed to justify the dangerous and unjustified deployment of chemical agents against elected officials and other non-violent participants. We were a delegation of approximately fifteen individuals, including Members of Congress, legal counsel, congressional staff, media, and representatives from the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) and the Central American Resource Center (CARECEN).”
As a consequence of being subjected to the use of tear gas that was employed to get the crowd to back off, Torres maintains, “I was admitted to the emergency room for respiratory treatment, observation, and now must take medication.”
During the course of the delegation’s visit to the Roybal Building, Torres said, she learned that the federal officials responsible for the incarceration of the illegal aliens at the Roybal building spurned the efforts by some of those arrestees family members to provide them with medication and that ICE has not updated the database charting those prisoners in federal custody with the names of those arrested during the Los Angeles immigration raids.
She further asserted that ICE denying the Congressional delegation’s access to the Roybal facility was a violation of federal law granting members of Congress access to federal detention facilities.
It was, however, the position of Todd Lyon, the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Essayli, that Torres, the other Congress members and their entire party, by showing up unannounced at the Roybal Building, were in potential violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(a)) 18 U.S.C. § 1512(d)) and 18 U.S.C. § 371. Essayli is weighing the filing of charges against all 15, depending upon the identification of the 11 individuals accompanying the Congress members and what action the Congress members are to take in their official capacity with regard to the immigration enforcement effort and the events of June 7.
Similarly, five days later, on June 12, as the Trump Administration’s Director of Home Security Kristi Noem was addressing members of the media in a restricted, by-invitation only press conference at the Westwood Federal Building in Los Angeles, the senior Democratic U.S. Senator from California Alex Padilla, an indefatigable advocate for illegal aliens, attempted to interrupt her presentation, triggering a response from Noem’s security detail, which included FBI agents, ICE agents, agents with the Department of Homeland Security, at least two members of the Secret Service and a U.S. Marshal.
The Sentinel has learned that Padilla, in his capacity as a senator, was meeting that morning at the Westwood Federal Building with General Gregory M. Guillot the head of the United States Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command. Known by its acronym USNORTHCOM, which conducts homeland defense, civil support and security cooperation with elements outside the federal government, including U.S. state officials and foreign governments and entities. While engaged with Guillot, one of Padilla’s staff members learned that Noem was giving a presentation in the building. Padilla, who with members of his staff had already gone through a security check including a metal detector to get into the Westwood Federal Building, cut short his exchange with Guillot and was led by an FBI agent to the room where Noem was engaged with several members of the media and local government agents in a presentation relating to the goals of the current immigration enforcement efforts in California. He was allowed into the presentation despite not having an invitation, on the basis of his being escorted into the conference by an FBI agent.
Padilla took up a place along a wall with others there. Noem, in providing a description of the rationale and parameters of the California operation, which at that point was centered in Los Angeles, was making the point that the enforcement activity was being handled unilaterally by federal employees and over the passive resistance of state and local officials. The Department of Homeland Security and ICE were attempting, Noem said to “liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that the governor and the mayor have placed on this country.”
That was too much for Padilla, who moved away from next to the wall, stepping past a photographer positioned to have an unobstructed angle on the secretary, and interrupted Noem, speaking over her to say, “I’m Senator Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary.”
As two Secret Service agents reacted to rush toward him, Padilla paused and continued, “The fact of the matter is that…”
The first of the Secret Service agents reached the Senator, commanding, “Sir, hands up.”
Padilla continued, saying, “…half a dozen violent criminals that you’re rotating on your…”
The second Secret Agent joined the first in restraining Padilla. Padilla sought to continue with his statement, uttering merely “…on your…” At that point, the agents, joined by a federal marshal, forced Padilla toward the hallway.
It was unclear whether Padilla’s reference to the half dozen violent criminals was to those arrested by ICE or members of the Trump Administration with whom Padilla has philosophical and political differences.
A member of Padilla’s staff, armed with a cellphone camera, caught Noem’s statements from the time they had come into the room on video and continued to video his boss in his effort to engage Noem and the aftermath, as he was moved out into the hallway, where he was first forced his knees, then to his chest, while his arms were handcuffed behind him.
Upon Padilla’s removal from the room, Noem continued with the theme of here presentation, stating that the Trump Administration had continued with its game plan. Despite political and media resistance and that the federal agents conducting the raids had been “doxxed from doing their duty… have been targeted and their families have been put in jeopardy.”
In the immediate aftermath of the incident, Democrats, liberals and advocates for illegal immigrants lionized Padilla, while Republicans and supporters of the Trump Administration’s immigration policy demonized him.
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung characterized Padilla as “a complete lunatic,” which he said was documented in the video of Padilla’s “freakout.”
California Governor Gavin Newsom said Padilla’s arrest was “outrageous, dictatorial and shameful,” while offering his opinion that “Trump and his shock troops are out of control.”
Padilla was disturbed by Newsom using the term “arrest” in reference to him. Fearing the governor’s citation of his criminal or arrest record might prove difficult in future campaigns, he hastened to point out that he had not been arrested but rather “detained.”
Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant Homeland Security Secretary, second only to Noem in the department, today said, “Senator Padilla chose disrespectful political theatre and interrupted a live press conference without identifying himself or having his Senate security pin on as he lunged toward Secretary Noem,” Even if Padilla did not represented an actual threat to Noem, McLaughlin said, the Secret Service and FBI agents and U.S. Marshals in the room had no way of knowing that and Padilla exacerbated the situation after he “was told repeatedly to back away and did not comply with officers’ repeated commands.”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said federal agents had “shoved and cuffed a sitting U.S. senator… and he is not just any senator. He is the first Latino citizen senator to ever represent our state. How do you not recognize one of two senators in our state?”
Bass suggested that Padilla’s status as a sitting U.S. Senator gave him license to interrupt Noem’s press conference.
Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno, a Republican, disputed that, saying that Padilla’s action merited arrest.
California’s junior senator, Adam Schiff, a Democrat, said the manner in which the federal agents in the Westwood Building reacted to Padilla was “disgraceful and disrespectful.” According to Schiff, Padilla “represents the best of the Senate.”
Deputy White House Press Secretary Abigail Jackson pointed out that Padilla was looking to provoke a reaction and perhaps even get arrested, doing so with one of his staff members videotaping what occurred so it could become a major media event.
“Padilla stormed a press conference without wearing his Senate pin or previously identifying himself to security, yelled and lunged toward Secretary Noem,” Jackson said. “Padilla didn’t want answers; he wanted attention. Padilla embarrassed himself and his constituents with this immature, theater-kid stunt, but it’s telling that Democrats are more riled up about Padilla than they are about the violent riots and assaults on law enforcement in LA.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, called the treatment Padilla received “despicable. It’s disgusting, It is so un-American. We need answers immediately.”
The Republican Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, said that Congress should consider censuring Padilla over the way he conducted himself at the Los Angeles press conference.
Senator Ben Ray Lujan a Democrat from New Mexico, saw Padilla as a man of virtue and the hero in what had unfolded on Thursday and Noem as the villain. Noem, Lujan said, “should step down.”
Meanwhile, the border between Alta California and Baja California is more secure than it has been since General Patton departed California for Operation Torch in North Africa in 1942.
Meanwhile the left is orchestrating protests in the streets of Los Angeles that are virtually indistinguishable from riots. Simultaneously, Democrats are gearing up to prevent the confirmation of Essayli as the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California.
