{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.padilla.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/watch-padilla-condemns-trump-dhs-unconstitutional-arrests-of-u-s-citizens/", "WATCH: Padilla Condemns Trump DHS\u2019 Unconstitutional Arrests of U.S. Citizens", "2025-12-09", "2025", "2025-12", "Democrat", "Senate", "CA", "Alex Padilla", "P000145", "www.padilla.senate.gov", "padilla", "https://www.padilla.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2014 Today, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee, joined a bicameral spotlight forum to denounce the Department of Homeland Security\u2019s (DHS) unlawful arrests of U.S. citizens. U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Ranking Member of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and U.S. Representative Robert Garcia (D-Calif.-42), Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, convened the forum to receive testimony from five of these American citizens, including three Californians, whom DHS agents have violently arrested and detained.\n\nDHS continues to lie about its treatment of American citizens. In October, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem falsely claimed, \u201c[t]here\u2019s no American citizens that have been arrested or detained,\u201d and the account @DHSgov posted just last week, \u201cICE does NOT arrest or deport U.S. citizens.\u201d On the contrary, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents in California and across the country have repeatedly arrested and detained American citizens, including veterans, at times using violent physical force.\n\nPadilla emphasized that the Trump Administration\u2019s militarization of American cities, starting with Los Angeles, to conduct indiscriminate immigration enforcement was the test case for President Trump\u2019s mass deportation campaign across the country. ICE and CBP agents have repeatedly violated due process rights and profiled individuals \u2014 including U.S. citizens \u2014 who they claim \u201clook like\u201d noncitizen enforcement targets.\n\nPadilla asked all five U.S. citizens at the spotlight forum what they would say if President Trump, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, or other Trump Administration officials were in front of them. He heard emotional pleas from California witnesses to stop scapegoating immigrants and racially profiling American citizens. The witnesses included:\n\nJavier Ramirez (California): Mr. Ramirez was violently assaulted by DHS agents and held for four days, where he was denied adequate treatment for diabetes, leading to severe complications.\n\nGeorge Retes (California): Mr. Retes is a U.S. Army veteran who was violently arrested and detained during a raid at his job site in Southern California and detained for three days, during which he was refused the ability to contact his family and missed his daughter\u2019s birthday.\n\nAndrea Velez (California): Ms. Velez was on her way to work in downtown Los Angeles when she got caught up in an immigration raid and was falsely charged with assaulting an officer, a charge that was later dropped.\n\nWilmer Chavarria (Vermont): Mr. Chavarria, a school superintendent, was detained after returning to the United States from visiting family overseas, interrogated for hours, and even faced demands to search his personal and school district devices, which contained sensitive information about students and faculty.\n\nDayanne Figueroa (Illinois): Ms. Figueroa was sideswiped while driving to work and then violently pulled from her car by DHS agents who pointed guns at her; while detained for hours, she suffered internal trauma, having recently undergone two kidney surgeries weeks before the incident, as well as injuries to her wrists from being handcuffed.\n\nPadilla also heard from Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, Senior Fellow at the American Immigration Council, about how the Trump Administration\u2019s diversion of resources to immigration enforcement makes all Americans less safe.\n\nKey Excerpts:\n\nPADILLA: If you had the Administration up here, if you had Donald Trump, if you had the Secretary of Homeland Security, if you had other officials from the Trump Administration up here, what would you tell them?\n\nWILMER CHAVARRIA: I would say that we\u2019ve seen this before. We see it right through you. We\u2019ve seen leaders dehumanize entire communities, entire races, entire peoples. And we know why you dehumanize us. And I will say, we will come out of this, and we will come out of it stronger.\n\nJAVIER RAMIREZ: They should be ashamed of themselves. I don\u2019t want to raise my kids in an America where they have to be careful, you know, just by being their skin color.\n\nPADILLA: Mr. Melnick, I know you come to this conversation from a different perspective given your role and expertise. Let me ask you a different question. \u2026 The argument from the Administration is that they\u2019re going after the worst of the worst. We see in reality that that\u2019s far from the case. The fear and intimidation they\u2019ve stoked in so many communities across the country is clear in my mind. Has this mass deportation agenda made any community or country safer?\n\nMELNICK: There\u2019s no evidence that this is making us more safe. In fact, it\u2019s the other way around. I testified in front of Congress on this issue before. By diverting resources away from child exploitation, by turning ICE Homeland Security Investigations into just one other arm of ICE\u2019s enforcement and removal operations, they are making us less safe. They are taking counterterrorism operatives and telling them to go out on the street and arrest migrants. They\u2019re taking people whose job it is to investigate pedophiles preying on children, and telling those officers to go round up dishwashers instead. And that doesn\u2019t make us safer.\n\nVideo of Padilla\u2019s remarks and questioning is available here.\n\nSenator Padilla has been a leading voice in opposition to President Trump\u2019s cruel and indiscriminate mass deportation agenda. He has denounced the Trump Administration\u2019s stops, arrests, detentions, and deportations of U.S. citizens and pressed Secretary Noem on the wrongful targeting of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients. In July, Padilla joined a Senate Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee hearing to set the record straight on President Trump and Stephen Miller\u2019s cruel mass deportation campaign, blasting the Administration for intentionally stoking fear and scapegoating immigrants. In September, Padilla joined 60 of his Senate and House colleagues in opening a new investigation into the Trump Administration\u2019s arrests, detentions, and deportations of noncitizen service members, veterans, and military families.\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:09:11Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.padilla.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/watch-padilla-condemns-trump-dhs-unconstitutional-arrests-of-u-s-citizens/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.0454940386116505, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}