Eight days ago, Senator Alex Padilla was forcibly removed from a news conference and handcuffed by federal agents after he interrupted Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, at the Wilshire Federal Building in Los Angeles.
At the same building on Friday, Vice President JD Vance disparaged Mr. Padilla for engaging in “political theater” and called him by the wrong name.
“Well, I was hoping Jose Padilla would be here to ask a question, but unfortunately, I guess he decided not to show up because there wasn’t the theater,” Mr. Vance said during a news conference in response to a reporter. “I think everybody realizes that’s what this is. It’s pure political theater.”
Mr. Vance’s spokeswoman later said that he misspoke when he said the senator’s name.
The vice president spent much of his news conference blaming Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles for the violence caused by some protesters in the city and the obstruction of immigration enforcement. Mr. Vance, who shook the hands of about 20 Marines who were at the federal building, alternated between attacks on California Democrats and praise for law enforcement.
“Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass, they decided to go to war against the people trying to keep our community safe,” Mr. Vance said. “That’s a disgrace. That’s a terrible commentary on their qualities as leaders.”
Mr. Newsom fired back on X soon after. “Since you’re so eager to talk about me, how about saying it to my face,” he said. “Let’s debate. Time and place?”
Ms. Bass, in a news conference quickly convened to respond to Mr. Vance, accused the Trump administration of orchestrating “a stunt and an experiment” by sending the California National Guard and the Marines to Los Angeles. About 4,000 Guard troops and 700 Marines have been deployed to the city, which has been mostly quiet since Saturday.
“How dare you say that city officials encouraged violence,” Ms. Bass said. “We kept the peace.”
“The federal officials that were here protected a federal building,” she added. “Crowd control was handled most aptly by the Los Angeles Police Department, the Sheriff’s Department and local law enforcement.”
Last week, the removal of Mr. Padilla, a Democrat, was captured on cellphone video by an aide, and the images rocketed across the internet, including to the phones of his stunned colleagues in the Senate. Those on the left condemned the incident as an example of authoritarianism by the Trump administration, while those on the right criticized Mr. Padilla for disrupting Ms. Noem’s event and defended the federal agents who briefly detained him.
Mr. Padilla said he was at the federal building on June 12 for a meeting that hadn’t started, and he had walked over to Ms. Noem’s news conference to hear her speak. About five minutes in, he interrupted her by asking why she was exaggerating, right after she said the Trump administration was staying in Los Angeles to “liberate this city from the socialist and burdensome leadership” of Mr. Newsom and Ms. Bass.
Mr. Padilla was not arrested, and he met with Ms. Noem after the news conference.
Mr. Padilla is a Los Angeles native who is the son of Mexican immigrants and began his political career on the Los Angeles City Council. He and other Democrats have spoken out against the frequent raids by immigration officials in recent weeks that have spurred numerous protests.
Mr. Vance and Mr. Padilla served in the Senate together for two years before Mr. Vance left to become vice president at the beginning of this year. In his role as vice president, Mr. Vance is also the presiding officer of the Senate, holding the power to break ties and administer the counting of electoral ballots in presidential elections.
“As a former colleague of Senator Padilla, the Vice President knows better,” Mr. Padilla’s spokeswoman Tess Oswald said in a statement. “Another unserious comment from an unserious administration.”
Mr. Padilla is one of a growing number of Democratic officials who have been handcuffed while challenging the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts.
Mr. Vance, at his news conference on Friday, described the actions of those Democratic leaders as publicity stunts.
“These guys show up, they want to be captured on camera doing something,” Mr. Vance said. “They want to be able to go back to their far-left groups and to say, ‘Look at me. I stood up against border enforcement. I stood up against Donald Trump.’”
Later Friday, a spokeswoman for Mr. Vance, said the vice president misspoke when he said Mr. Padilla’s name.
“He must have mixed up two people who have broken the law,” said Taylor Van Kirk, the spokeswoman.
Jose Padilla is the name of a man who was convicted of terrorism conspiracy in 2007 after being arrested in Chicago on suspicion of planning to set off a radioactive dirty bomb. It is also the name of an M.L.B. player, and a Spanish D.J. who died a few years ago, known for defining the chill-out sound of the 1990s.
Gabriela Bhaskar contributed reporting from Los Angeles.
