#adrian martinez

[didalexiabreakupwitholgaisback]

wow i didn’t realize how long alexia had been working with her physio…12 years! that’s so cool

it's amazing! also, alexia is very loyal to the people who have been with her since the beginning. 🥹

[scenesandscreens]

Pieces of April (2003)

Director - Peter Hedges, Cinematography - Tami Reiker

"Once, there was this day... this one day when... everyone realized they needed each other."

[mrs-stans]

@rachel_nyc: SAG Screening, Q&A, and Reception at The Roxy with Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong, and later Ben Stiller!! Also, Adrian Martinez!! What a night!!

[gothicseverance]

The self-indulgent frivolity of the gothic.

—A Philosophical View of the Gothic Novel

[justinspoliticalcorner]

US citizens jailed in LA Ice raids speak out: ‘They came ready to attack’

Exclusive: Andrea Velez and Adrian Martinez recount their capture by immigration officers and its effects on their lives

Sam Levin at The Guardian:

As two masked men dragged her into an unmarked SUV, Andrea Velez tried to focus on details she might later remember – one man’s red shirt, the car’s leather seats, a black backpack inside. At 9.20am on 24 June in downtown Los Angeles, the 32-year-old was heading into work at a footwear company when the men in gator masks jumped out of their car and started chasing vendors and other people on the street, she recalled. As people fled, Velez froze and held on to her bag.

Suddenly, she recalled, one of the men slammed her to the ground and placed her into his car. The men had “Police” vests, but otherwise were in plainclothes and didn’t identify themselves. She didn’t know why they had taken her. The men, it turned out, were Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) deportation officers. They were looking to question people about “whether they were lawfully present” in the US, an agent later wrote. Velez is a US citizen who grew up in downtown, not far from the incident. “They just came out ready to attack anyone,” said Velez, in her first interview since her arrest. “I thought they were kidnapping me.” A day after her arrest, the Department of Justice charged Velez with assaulting an officer, which could carry a 20-year sentence. The claim was shocking to Velez, who is 4ft 11in and said she had not laid hands on anyone.

She is one of many southern California residents swept up as the Trump administration has aggressively jailed and prosecuted protesters, as well as civilians who film and object to Ice arrests and bystanders caught up in haphazard raids. Ice detained more than 2,000 immigrants in the region in June. Bill Essayli, the Trump-appointed US attorney for the region, has prosecuted at least 18 people on claims they interfered with immigration arrests, with most defendants accused of assault. Prosecutors have been forced to dismiss at least five of those felony cases, including the one against Velez. The Guardian revealed last week that the justice department also dropped felony assault cases against four anti-Ice demonstrators after officers made false and misleading statements about events captured on film.

‘She was just standing there’

Before her arrest, Velez was not protesting against Ice – she was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, she said. The graduate of the local Cal Poly Pomona university and lifelong LA resident said her mother and sister had dropped her off by her office just as Ice officers arrived at the intersection. After she was forced into the Ice agents’ car, she spotted Los Angeles police department (LAPD) officers, left the vehicle and ran toward them, she said: “I thought they would help me.” She told an LAPD officer she thought the men were kidnapping her: “If I did something wrong, I’d rather have you arrest me. I trust people with uniforms.” Bystander footage taken from a nearby building shows what happened next: an LAPD officer holds on to Velez as one of the Ice agents runs up and handcuffs her. She does not appear to resist, but the Ice officer picks her up and carries her off the ground across the street. In another clip, a witness is heard saying, “This girl was just standing there … they are causing chaos.”

A third video shows LAPD shielding the Ice officers from civilians filming and protesting about her arrest. Velez is seen trying to give her mother’s phone number to a bystander. She later learned her mother and 17-year-old sister had witnessed the incident, but felt powerless to intervene. Back in the Ice agents’ car, Velez said the officer driving appeared furious about how the incident had played out: “He was screaming in rage.” She overheard him on the phone discussing “how many bodies they had gotten”, she said, and referring to her as an “alleged US citizen”.

‘They make it seem like we’re … criminals’

Velez and Luis Hipolito, a 23-year-old man later charged as her co-defendant, were taken to a parking structure. Video of Hipolito’s arrest later published by the LA Times showed four agents had aggressively detained him by piling on top of him and using pepper spray. As the two waited to be processed, Velez said she saw his face was swollen, he was having trouble seeing, his shirt was bloody and he appeared to be convulsing and hyperventilating. His requests for medical attention were initially denied, she said: “He was in pain, but they were like: ‘It’s no big deal, you will get over it.’” Even as he struggled, he tried to comfort her: “He was making me feel safe.” Eventually, he was taken away in an ambulance, she said. Meanwhile, she saw ambulances going in and out of the federal jail nearby, which frightened her. She said officers later forced her to pose for a photo where several of them stood in a line holding her with their backs to the camera, an unusual mugshot setup that has since become commonplace for DHS press releases and X.com posts: “They make it seem like we’re really bad criminals, the worst of the worst, when we’re just regular people.”

Velez was placed in the Metropolitan detention center, the downtown federal jail that has become the site of protests. There, other incarcerated women took care of her. Staff did not give her water and she learned from other residents that she had to buy a cup, but having been detained just hours before, she had no money on her account. She also couldn’t buy utensils to eat. One woman on her way out donated her cup and spork to Velez.

[...]

‘What they were doing was wrong’

Adrian Martinez, 20, was jailed on 17 June while immigration officers were conducting “roving patrol duties” in Pico Rivera, a 90% Latino city in south-east LA. On break outside his job at Walmart, he saw border patrol agents moving to detain an older janitor. The agents, records showed, targeted the custodial worker after he started running away from them.

Witness footage shows a masked, plainclothes officer with an assault rifle shoving Martinez, who is heard saying the man they are detaining is a “hard worker”. At least five officers end up pushing Martinez to the ground and grabbing him by the neck as they force him into their car, the footage shows. Essayli, the US attorney, posted Martinez’s photo on social media the following day, saying he was arrested for “punching a border patrol agent in the face”. The footage does not show him punching an officer. Essayli’s office did not, however, charge Martinez with assault, but rather “conspiracy to impede a federal officer”. The justice department complaint included no reference to punching. Still, Greg Bovino, border patrol chief for parts of southern California, falsely claimed on X.com that Martinez “caught a federal case for assault”. Essayli’s office did not respond to inquiries about Martinez’s case. “I just wanted to speak up for that guy, it was not right, it was like they were kidnapping him,” Martinez told the Guardian. “What they were doing was wrong. They were bothering a poor old man who was just working … I was just using words and they started attacking me.”

Martinez was taken to a parking structure by the federal jail where, he said, he was held for hours. Officers would not let him call his mother, he said. “They were not believing me when I said I was a US citizen.” He said he was most worried about his family not knowing his whereabouts and anxious about his father’s car, which he left at work. When officers interrogated him at the parking structure, they tried to get him to admit to assault, he said. “I never put my hands on anybody. Why is my own government lying saying I tried to assault someone? It’s scary.”

The Guardian has a story on US citizens Andrea Velez and Adrian Martinez that were jailed in the LA ICE raids and their impacts on their lives.

[cinelestial]

First look at THE AMATEUR directed by James Hawes.

Cast includes Rami Malek, Rachel Brosnahan, Caitríona Balfe, Jon Bernthal, Michael Stuhlbarg, Holt McCallany, Julianne Nicholson, Adrian Martinez, Danny Sapani, and Laurence Fishburne.

Releasing in theaters April 11th, 2025

[abs0luteb4stard]

W A T C H E D

I'm annoyed that it didn't make tons more money than it did. It's excellent.

[moviez4ublogz]

🎬 The Amateur (2025) A competent revenge flick with brains and bite. Malek’s glacial performance as a grieving data decoder turned assassin anchors this cat-and-mouse game, elevating it beyond its tropes. The tech may be Hollywood-fake, but the emotional stakes—and Malek’s haunting presence—feel terrifyingly real. 🔗 Read the full review on Moviez4U: 👉 https://moviez4u.blog/the-amateur-2025/ ✍️ Written by: Ad1mz