The FBI reports on Tuesday that the number of victims of anti-Latino Hispanic hate crimes increases at 21 percent in 2018 and the attacks are mainly targeting people and not property. According to the report published in wsau.com, the data coincides with the ongoing debate of President Donald Trump's stricter policy on immigration and the mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas where a suspected gunman said that he was targeting the Mexicans. 

The Director of the Center for the Study of Hate Crime and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino Brian Levin said that the attacks against Muslims peaked in 2016 when terrorism was the concern but now that the main concern of Trump's administration is immigration, Latinos and Hispanics are being attacked. They see this scenario as a swap of one derided-group over a social-political arena.

FBI said in its annual Hate Crime Statistics Report that 671 victims were recorded in the anti-Latino Hispanic hate crime incidents in 2018 compared to the 552 victims in 2017. Moreover, the head of Washington-based Latino civil rights organization Unidos Janet Murguia said that Trump carries some responsibility for the increase of hate crimes.

She added that Trump frequently refers to Latinos in the most hateful and bigoted ways specially when she visited El Paso and heard the sentiments of the Mexican victims following the shooting. However, White House did not give any comments on the said issue.

In a separate report from CBS News, hate crime murders in U.S. reached a 27-year high in 2018 that includes the deadliest anti-Semitic crime in U.S. history where 11 worshipers were slain at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2017 or a total of 24 hate crime murders overall. 

In the new FBI statistics, hate crimes overall were down slightly in 2018 following the three years of increases. The FBI reports that in 2016 there were 6,121 hate crime incidents were recorded and 7,175 in 2017. 

The chief advocacy officer for the American Jewish Committee Daniel Elbaum said in a statement that it is good to see that there were few hate crimes recorded in 2017 than in 2018 but the rise of hate crimes this year is very disturbing. He added that it is very hard to discuss a problem not until you handle it and every expert in hate crimes would say there are numbers that are not reported. 

Single-Bias Hate Crime Incidents in 2018

  • 57.5% were motivated by a race/ethnicity/ancestry bias
  • 20.2% were motivated by religious bias
  • 17% were motivated by sexual-orientation bias
  • 2.4% were motivated by gender-identity bias
  • 2.3% were motivated by disability bias
  • 0.7% were motivated by gender bias 

46.9 percent of crimes motivated by race, ethnicity and ancestry were fueled by bias against African-Americans while 14 percent between 2017 to 2018 involved anti-Hispanic hate crimes. Meanwhile, 57.8 percent of crimes motivated by religion were anti-Jewish, while in 2017 the anti-Sikh crimes trippled from 20 to 60 in 2018. Moreover, crimes motivated by disability also soared from 116 in 2017 to 159 in 2018.  

ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement that it is unacceptable that Jews and Jewish institution continue to be at the center of religion-based hate crime attacks and the government needs to take concrete action and address this significant problem. 

Read more: Victims of anti-Latino hate crimes soar in U.S.: FBI report and FBI: Hate crime murders hit record in 2018; crimes targeting transgender people soar