June 21 (UPI) — Vice President JD Vance got the name of Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., wrong while criticizing him, along with California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, over immigration raids in that city.
Vance referred to Padilla as “Jose” during a news conference in Los Angeles this week.
A former senator, Vance also took aim at his ex-colleague’s forced removal from a Department of Homeland Security news conference earlier in the month, calling it “theater.”
The senior California Senator was handcuffed and removed from the room after trying to speak to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem but later said the detention was not done to grab attention.
Padilla on Saturday fired back at Vance.
“The Vice President knows my name. But that’s not the point. He should be focused on removing the thousands of unnecessary troops from the streets of Los Angeles, not petty slights,” he said during an interview with MSNBC and posted on X.
“Look, sadly, it’s just an indicator of how petty and unserious this administration is,” he continued. “He’s the vice president of the United States. You think he’d take the situation in Los Angeles more seriously.”
Vance spent five hours in Los Angeles, first speaking publicly to update the situation around the continued arrest and detention efforts of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, arguing Bass, Padilla and Newsom continue to hinder those attempts.
President Donald Trump has ordered in thousands of California National Guard Troops and hundreds of U.S. Marines to assist federal agents. Officials began carrying out major immigration raids in Los Angeles on June 6.
Newsom and other officials have argued the move to bring in the military is illegal. This week, the a three-judge panel with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that the troop deployment was “likely legal.”
Trump, who has pushed for major deportation operations since his presidential campaign, later called it a “Big win,” on Truth Social.
“What happened here was a tragedy. You had people who were doing the simple job of enforcing the law, and you had rioters, egged on by the governor and the mayor, making it harder for them to do their job,” Vance told reporters at the news conference.
“It was necessary to send in the National Guard to stop that process to bring some order back to this great city.”
He later met privately with military personnel before attending the six-figure Republican National Committee’s annual summer retreat in Beverly Hills.
