A California city official has responded to backlash after she appeared to call on gangs to defend their neighborhoods from federal immigration agents, saying her comments were satirical.
In a video posted to social media in June, Cynthia Gonzalez, the vice mayor of Cudahy, a suburb in southeast Los Angeles County, asked why street gangs had not emerged to “help out and organize” against the “biggest gang there is.”
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) branded Gonzalez’s post, which was subsequently taken down, as “despicable.”…