The Trump Crackdown on Elected Officials
Thursday afternoon, the lecturer of the room, Mike Johnson, smiled in a corridor of the Capitol while he diverted questions from journalists on the most recent indignation of the week. A few hours earlier, in Los Angeles, Alex Padilla, the senior Democratic senator from California, had interrupted a press conference held by Kristi Noem, the interior security secretary, then was thrown on the ground and handcuffed by federal agents. In a video of the incident, Padilla, in Dark Slacks and a windbreak, identifies himself before asking questions about the deployment by the administration of the National Guard and federal troops with police demonstrations at the “I saw the same video, a very brief video that I think that many people have made,” said Johnson. “Everyone can draw their own conclusions.” He continued by saying that he would support a motion to censor Padilla, who, he added with a sly smile, had acted “inappropriately”.
Shortly after the video became viral, the Trump administration responded with its usual lie. Noem blamed Padilla not to have identified himself, even if the images refuted his claims. In a later interview, Padilla, who had arrived at the federal building in Los Angeles that day for a different meeting, said: “From the moment I entered the building, I am escorted by a member of the National Guard and an FBI agent. I asked, “Well, since we are waiting, can we go listen to the press conference?” They opened my door to me. The Ministry of Internal Security displayed a declaration on X in which he wrongly said that Padilla had “stimulated himself to secretary Noem” and “did not comply with the repeated orders of the officers”, adding that the secret services “thought he was an attacker and the officers acted in an appropriate manner”.
At the time, the arrest of an American senator in Los Angeles was the last incident in an increasingly aggressive actions model that the administration took against elected Democrats and their allies. Each body was linked to the repression of Trump’s immigration. At the end of April, the FBI arrested and charged a County Judge of Wisconsin, Hannah Dugan, for having pretended to help an undocumented immigrant to escape immigration and customs agents in a local courthouse. (She pleaded not guilty.) On May 9, ICE Agents arrested the mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka and Lamonica Mciver, an American deputy, outside an immigration prison in New Jersey. Baraka, who was accused of having intrusion over private property, was detained for five hours before being released; The accusations were abandoned and, a few weeks later, Baraka filed a defamation complaint against Alina Habba, the former personal lawyer of Trump and the US interim lawyer for New Jersey. (The costume cites a flow of misleading claims according to which Habba had published on social networks on the actions of Baraka, affirming, among other things, that “he has readily chosen not to take into account the law”.) McIiver was accused of having attacked a federal officer in chaos surrounding the arrest of Baraka and charged on June 10. “The accusations against me are purely political,” said Mciver. “They deform and deform my actions.” If she is sentenced, she risks up to eight years in prison. On May 28, DHS agents broke into the New York office of the American Democratic Democratic Congress Jerrold Nadler in pursuit of alleged rioters who had protested during ICE Agents arrested immigrants outside a courtroom. A few moments after the agents reached the door, they handcuffed a staff member, saying that when they had asked for entry without a mandate, she had physically hampered them. On June 17, less than a week after the arrest of Padilla, ICE The agents approached and handcuffed Brad Lander, the New York controller and a candidate for the mayor, while he accompanied a person outside an immigration court. “You are closer,” said an agent, according to a recording. Lander, when he was handcuffed near an elevator, replied: “I do not complain. I stand here in the corridor. ” The DHS later accused him of “the assault of the police and of hindering a federal officer”.
The incidents involving legislators all have something in common: in each case, video evidence directly contradict or decrease the account of the administration of what happened. The accusations against the representative Mciver are undoubtedly the most serious. However, she and two other representatives – Rob Menendez and Bonnie Watson Coleman, both Democrats from New Jersey – were transferred to the establishment on May 9 to exercise an uncontectuctive prerogative: Congress members are authorized to visit and inspect the countless, innumerable immigration installations in the context of their surveillance role. The practice has become quite common in recent years. The installation of Newark, called Delaney Hall, opened the first week of May, a few months after DHS signed a $ 1.2 billion contract with private prison company Geo to operate it. Baraka, who presented himself at the time as Governor, opposed the contract and had raised questions on the aspects of the construction permit. When he tried to visit the establishment in the past, Geo employees refused him.
The three members of the congress arrived on May 9 around noon. To enter the installation, visitors go through an outdoor door and in an interior parking that leads to the main compound. They were waiting for about an hour when Menendez noticed a number of weapons ICE Agents leave the building in the parking lot. “I have never really seen a handful of armed officers in a detention center,” he told me. “These guys were clearly presented themselves, as, the way you expect them to do so if they were about to go out on the field.” He remembered having thought: “What’s going to happen?”
It was then that Menendez realized that Baraka had shown himself, but it barely explained why there would be so many agents. “Honestly, I thought that there was literally a major and major raid, because I have never seen so many armed agents,” he said. According to the Baraka trial, the representative McIiver invited him to meet the delegation of the congress outside the establishment after their tour. But, at 1:50 am PMA guard parked at the outdoor door invited Baraka inside, saying that it would “calm the crowd” which had gathered outside to protest. About forty-five minutes later, a main agent of the DHS approached Baraka and ordered him to leave. He lingered, but only briefly. At that time, the members of the congress had seen Baraka inside the door and approached to take care with him. The agent returned and threatened to arrest Baraka, who left the premises on public property outside.
What happened then is less clear. Menendez says he heard part of a telephone conversation in which a DHS agent apparently speaking to a superior, said something about a decision to stop Baraka. A large group of agents then left the installation. “We were ready to tour,” said Menendez. “The mayor came out. The situation was over. ” However, he continued: “It was then that they decided to open the door where they knew that there were all those people who protest by public property.” It was inevitable for the situation to degenerate: armed federal agents converged on a crowd outside the establishment’s land. The representatives went to join Baraka. The videos show them to jostle and push into the fray. There is no question that McIver established physical contact with a federal agent. But the images hardly show what she was accused – she seems to be growing herself. “You cannot speak to a member of the congress like that,” may be heard McIiver at some point. A spokesperson for the DHS later said, without evidence, that the members of the Congress were part of a “crowd” and “” agresses our ICE Application agents, including the body slamming a woman ICE officer.”
Robert Gottheim, the chief of staff of Nadler, was amazed by the descriptions swollen by the government of his confrontations with civil servants. “You exercise your rights. They do what they want. Then you find out after the fact,” he said. The Manhattan immigration court is on the fifth floor of the federal building at 201 Varick Street; Nadler’s office is on the sixth floor. In the afternoon of May 28, ICE The police presented themselves on the fifth floor with photos of immigrants who were to appear in court. As the administration has intensified its arrest operations in Courthusians and the routine recording appointments ICE The offices, the demonstrators and the clergy presented themselves to document the activity. Two members of Nadler’s staff had descended below to observe and, when the tensions won, invited the militants upstairs to defuse the situation. Federal Protective Service officers, a DHS agency that protects government property and staff, followed them at the Nadler office.
