“Democrat officials and their staffers are growing increasingly radical and extreme,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said.

Democrats counter that they are standing up for civil rights, but the heated encounters make one thing clear: The politics of immigration are becoming increasingly tense as the Trump effort to deport noncitizens picks up pace.

Padilla argued that his treatment at the hands of federal agents shows the risk to ordinary Americans.

“If this is how the Department of Homeland Security responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they’re doing to farmworkers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California and throughout the country,” he said.

Since last month, at least four Democratic officials, including Padilla, have run into conflict with federal officers in clashes related to the administration’s campaign.

Padilla’s handcuffing took place at a press briefing Noem held to tout the administration’s efforts to arrest people without legal immigration status around Southern California in a series of actions that sparked raucous protests — and prompted the Trump administration to deploy National Guard troops and Marines over the objections of local authorities.

Federal agents bustled the senator out of the room and forced him to the ground in a scene captured on video that caused outrage among Democratic members of Congress.

DHS defended the response and said that Noem met with Padilla later for about 15 minutes.

The incident came after Democratic officials got into a scuffle with federal officers outside an immigration detention facility in Newark, New Jersey, in May, resulting in the arrest of the city’s mayor, Ras Baraka, followed by the indictment of Rep. LaMonica McIver.

Also in May, DHS officers briefly detained an aide to New York Rep. Jerry Nadler inside the Congressmember’s office amid protests against immigration detentions at a federal courthouse in the same building.

The agency at the time said that officers only entered the space to “conduct a security check” on the representative’s office because of reports of protests nearby. An officer can be heard in a video of the incident accusing Nadler’s staff of “harboring rioters,” and requesting to search the space, prompting staff members to attempt to block their entry into private areas of the office.

No arrests were ultimately made, but the incident drew outcry from Nadler and other Democrats, who said the incident was a reflection of the Trump administration’s approach to immigration enforcement.

Nadler cautioned in a statement at the time that “if this can happen in a Member of Congress’s office, it can happen to anyone — and it is happening.”