The video clip posted last week on social media by Rogelio Martinez, a mayoral candidate for the city of Long Beach, was short and to the point.
“I need to see 55 gang leaders here this coming Monday, we need to take back our city, enough is enough, ICE needs to get out of Long Beach and this is the only way that I know how to get them out; peacefully, but with strong force, but peacefully.”
The video quickly went viral and landed Martinez, who is among the field of candidates challenging Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson in his bid for reelection, in hot water. He found himself on the receiving end of a lot of anger, he said, particularly from conservatives.
“I had so many death threats, predominantly from MAGA white supremacists because I didn’t call on the white gangs, so I guess they were kind of hurt by that,” Martinez said in an interview on Thursday.
Martinez said he shot the video while standing outside City Hall on Jan. 30, a day of solidarity in which people were asked not to shop or work and to protest the Trump administration’s mass deportations.
He said he uploaded the video on Facebook and Instagram to bring attention to the immigration raids taking place in his city and was not advocating for violence against federal immigration agents.
“There was not going to be any war between gang leaders and ICE,” he said. “I don’t know how many gangs there are in Long Beach. I picked 55 purely because I’m 55 years old. No one bothered to just ask me how [I] came up with [that number].”
Officials with the Department of Homeland Security could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday.
Martinez said he spoke with Long Beach police and got a call from the FBI after the video was posted. “I was like, holy Toledo, this is really the FBI,” he said, recalling the phone call.
He said the federal agent had questions for him:
“Has any gang member reached out to you?”
He told her no, they had not.
“Have you reached out to any gang members?”
No, he had not.
“And what do you expect about today?”
He told her only a “peaceful community rally in silence.”
When she asked how many people were expected to show up, he told her just one — himself.
“I learned in life you can only count on yourself,” he said.
The call ended shortly after, he said.
It’s not the first time such a video has sparked outrage. Last year, Huntington Park Councilmember Cynthia Gonzalez found herself in the national spotlight when she posted a video on social media calling on street gangs to organize in the face of immigration sweeps.
Her attorney at the time said the council member’s message was meant to encourage peaceful demonstrations against such operations — not violence.
Gonzalez took down the video and later issued a public apology.
But Martinez said he didn’t delete his video. Instead, he said, Meta removed the video from its platforms.
Still, a version of the video has continued to circulate on social media; some versions have been trimmed down as people respond to the video. It even caught the attention of Michael Franzese, a former crime boss, who was so bothered by what he heard that he took to Instagram to voice his opinion.
“You can’t make this stuff up,” Franzese says in his response video.
Martinez said that despite his “off the cuff” video, he takes his race for mayor seriously. He said he plans to focus on local jobs and unemployment.
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