The anti-immigrant movement merged with anti-Latino sentiment under the guise of border security after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Gallego said. In response, Latinos have felt compelled to engage politically to combat the wave of misperception and xenophobia.

“What you started seeing is coded language – especially in Arizona –where people were talking about ‘well, I’m not against Latinos, I’m against illegal immigrants,’ but basically using that term to cast everybody the same,” he said. “I think there’s no difference anymore, and they’re wrapped in the same, which is why you’re also seeing Latinos now more strongly standing up for immigrant rights.”

Anti-Latino and immigrant hate has more recently been exacerbated by national legislation and rhetoric heard after the 2016 election, Gallego said.

“I remember growing up hearing anti-Latino slurs being thrown at me as a Latino – being called derogatory terms throughout high school,” Gallego said. “I certainly saw more rhetoric thrown at me as a Latino elected after 2010 because once the politicians started talking in these terms, and some of them became even more and more pejorative and racist … a lot more people felt that it was OK and acceptable to engage in that in public.”

Nationwide, a 2018 report by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism in San Bernardino, California, found that anti-Latino hate crimes in America’s largest cities increased by 176 percent in the first two weeks after the 2016 election.

But politics from well before the Trump administration have done just as much to exacerbate the problem, said Gallego, who in the past has received death threats from white supremacists while trying to fight anti-immigration legislation when he served in the Arizona Legislature.

“I had death threats — personalized notes — left at my doorstep by white supremacists when I was at the statehouse because I was fighting to stop some crazy bills that were going to really affect immigrant communities,” he said.

Specifically, he pointed to the Arizona Senate Bill 1070 as a turning point in the anti-immigration movement. The bill allowed for law enforcement officials on the city, county or state level to inquire about citizens’ immigration status if they have “reasonable suspicion” to do so, according to the Arizona Legislature.

“With the culmination of SB 1070 happening, we basically tried to allow racial profiling of Latinos based on this idea of trying to curtail quote-unquote illegal immigration,” he said. “By 2010, there were Latino families in Arizona that were being told to go back to their country, to go back to Mexico – these are people that have lived in Arizona for generations.”

Anti-immigrant hate is due, in part, to massive influxes of immigrants in the 20th century and white backlash, according to Janice Iwama, an assistant law professor at American University. Between 1990 and 2015, the immigrant population more than doubled from 19.7 million to nearly 43.2 million living in the United States.

Gallego said there has been a decades-long political conflict over immigration in Congress and he doesn’t see any work toward a resolution in the near future.

“The rhetoric that comes from the White House – it’s not really challenged by the Republican leadership in the House,” he said.

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The report also suggests that “law enforcement agencies hold public meetings about hate crimes and orientations with specific targeted communities, such as Muslims and immigrants.”

Although reported hate crimes have increased by more than 20 percent from 2014 to 2016 in California, law enforcement “has not been doing enough to identify, report, and respond to these crimes,” according to the report.

At least one California sheriff’s department says it is addressing the problem in a big way.

To bolster victim outreach, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is emphasizing to the immigrant communities that it isn’t concerned with their immigration status, and that officers will aid victims with validating their citizenship, said Detective Christopher Keeling, the hate crime coordinator for the sheriff’s department.

“The fact that you’re a victim and you’re assisting with the investigation … we will help you stay here,” Keeling said deputies tell immigrants who report hate crimes. “We will help you with your VISA because we want you here because you’re not the type of person that we think should be moving.”

State law prohibits law enforcement from detaining, reporting or turning over hate crime victims and witnesses to federal immigration authorities “as long as such individuals are not charged with or convicted of certain crimes under state law,” according to the Auditor’s report.

Keeling said there was a 19 percent drop in reported hate crimes in his 4,000 square mile jurisdiction from 2016 to 2017. There were 166 hate crimes reported in 2017 and 206 in 2016, according to an LASD document obtained by News21.

He traces the drop in the county’s hate crimes, in part, to underreporting.

Undocumented immigrants, more so than other victim groups, are increasingly deterred from working with law enforcement because they fear deportation, undermining the county’s hate crime data accuracy, Keeling said.

“We can’t protect what we don’t know,” Keeling said.

Keeling said one of his department’s goals is to prevent undocumented immigrants from becoming hate incident victims twice – once for the crime and twice for a system that fails to report and protect.

New pamphlets that explain what hate crimes are, the rights every victim has and why he or she shouldn’t be afraid to report, regardless of immigration status, have been designed, Keeling said. Once printed, all LASD sheriff’s stations will have them and deputies will hand them out in the community, he added.

“Immigration status is NOT a determining factor for assistance,” states an excerpt in the pamphlet obtained by News21.

The pamphlet contains California’s hate crime statute and explains the difference between hate crimes and hate incidents. It also emphasizes that both types of situations must be reported to law enforcement.

“Hate crimes and hate incidents MUST be reported in order to ensure proper documentation, investigation and prosecution,” an excerpt of the pamphlet states. “Not reporting these incidents to law enforcement only encourages perpetrators to continue to act on their beliefs and they will continue to pose a threat to our communities.”

But Keeling said the pamphlets alone won’t properly bolster hate crime reporting in undocumented communities stricken with fear; it takes one-on-one attention, constant outreach, and eventually a level of trust that produces more accurate numbers.

“They have to first see us an equal, as a friend, as a partner,” he said. “And that takes time. I get it.”

But advocates say more needs to be done to improve relations between officers and immigrants who are victims of hate crimes.

“We have women that come to our office that are literally are afraid – even with asylum – that (citizenship) can be taken away from them,” said Maria Roman, a transgender woman who is a board member of the TransLatin@ Coalition, a nonprofit which does advocacy work for trans Latina immigrants.

“I think that there’s a lot of work to be done,” she said.

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