By Vanguard Staff
California State Senator Steve Padilla (D–San Diego) delivered an impassioned floor speech Monday night condemning a recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid that took place in the South Park neighborhood of San Diego. The raid, conducted last Friday evening, has drawn widespread criticism for its militarized tactics and for targeting workers rather than dangerous criminals.
Padilla, a former law enforcement officer, expressed outrage over what he called an excessive and unjustifiable display of federal power that disrupted families and traumatized children at a local restaurant. “This is atrocious. This is not enforcement. This is performance. This is intimidation,” Padilla declared during his address on the Senate floor.
According to Padilla, ICE agents descended on a pair of restaurants in his district during peak dining hours, deploying flashbangs and smoke bombs, and entering in tactical gear with faces covered. The stated goal of the operation, according to a federal affidavit Padilla reviewed, was to collect evidence related to the alleged employment of undocumented workers using falsified documents.
“I initially thought to myself, ‘Wow, there must be some dangerous felons in this restaurant,’” Padilla said. “RICO charges? Organized crime? A violent crime threat? But there was none of that.” Instead, Padilla said, the affidavit revealed the agents were searching for evidence of I-9 form violations—specifically, employees working under false or undocumented immigration status.
“What were those agents seeking? Evidence of something we’ve never seen in the history of California—people hard at work, actually on the tax roll, but whose immigration status is unlawful,” Padilla said. “I kept turning the pages—where’s the violent crime, the threat to the community, the exigency?”
He noted the warrant stemmed from an anonymous tip focusing on the business owners, but the enforcement ultimately targeted only the workers. “They were literally putting cooks in the kitchen who were chopping vegetables in handcuffs,” he said.
Recalling his own experiences in law enforcement, Padilla drew a sharp contrast between responsible policing and what he characterized as a performance meant to intimidate. “When I read this affidavit as someone who wore a badge for many years, proudly, I was appalled,” he said.
Padilla also criticized the hypocrisy of some members of the public who report undocumented individuals but then rely on their labor. “Oftentimes these folks, if their immigration status was in question, would be deported,” Padilla said, recounting past calls in wealthy neighborhoods. “But you know what else I observed? A little while later, ‘la abuelita’ with her handbag and her shawl walking to the same residence that had called the day before screaming about people who ‘don’t belong here’—to scrub their toilets, clean their floors, maintain their kitchens.”
The senator concluded his remarks by urging support for SB 580, a bill intended to strengthen legal clarity and statewide standards around immigration enforcement, particularly as it intersects with local jurisdictions. He emphasized the importance of ensuring that California’s policies uniformly protect the dignity and rights of all residents.
“The idea that justice exists without fairness, discretion, compassion, and reason—that idea has no place in California,” Padilla said. “It’s shameful. And I never thought, as a former law enforcement officer, that I’d be standing here criticizing a search warrant affidavit executed by agents of the federal government. But here we are.”
The raid and Padilla’s speech come amid growing tension between state and federal authorities over immigration enforcement, especially in sanctuary jurisdictions like San Diego.
