Anti-Mexican Sentiment - Additional Recent Incidents

Additional Recent Incidents

On May 30, 2009, US citizens Raul "Junior" Flores, 29, and his daughter, Brisenia Flores, age nine, of Arivaca, Arizona, were murdered by Shawna Forde, executive director of Minutemen troops, and her accomplices.

In July 2008, Luis Ramirez, an undocumented Mexican immigrant, was beaten to death by several young men in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania while walking home one evening. Witnesses reported that the assailants yelled racial epithets at Ramirez as they attacked him. Luis' (white) fiance and mother of his two children, Crystal Dillman, was quoted as saying of the four teenagers, "I think they might get off, because Luis was an illegal Mexican and these are 'all-American boys' on the football team who get good grades, or whatever they're saying about them. They'll find some way to let them go." Brandon Piekarsky, 17, and Derrick Donchak, 19, received sentences of 7 to 23 months for their roles in the murder of 25-year-old Mexican immigrant Luis Ramirez. Piekarsky and Donchak were subsequently convicted of civil rights violations in federal court and sentenced to 9 years in federal prison.

In California, the state with the largest Mexican and Mexican-American population, the number of hate crimes against Mexicans has almost doubled. The anti-Mexican feelings can also be directed against other Latino American nationalities in the USA. This statistic has been challenged by the anti-immigration Federation for American Immigration Reform for selecting a base year (2003) in which anti-Latino hate crimes were reported at an unusually low level and for not indexing the increase with the corresponding increase in the Hispanic population.

Since Alabama's immigration H.B.56, Birmingham, Alabama delicatessen owner Steve Dubrinsky "has been 'under attack' since speaking out for his restaurant's documented immigrant employees."

There have been many criticisms toward ICE and various politicians on what has been perceived by some as anti-Mexican speech or actions. In modern times, organizations such as neo-nazi, white supremacist, American nationalist, and nativist groups have all been known to and continue to intimidate, harass and advocate the use of violence towards Mexican-Americans. Ethnic slurs such as "wetback", "dogs" (as described by a member of the Houston Independent School District's Board of Trustees), "spick" or "spic", "dirty Mexican", "beaner", "illegal", "alien", "cucaracha", "bandido" or "bandito" (a derivate of English "bandit" emulating aspects of West Iberian languages rather than a misspell of Spanish bandido) have been used.

Many protests, walks, fasts, prayer groups, and marches are currently taking place in opposition to the new state immigration laws or bills around the USA.