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For years, an advocacy group has been collecting reports of hate acts directed at Asian Americans. A new publication from the group documents how the nature of those hate incidents has shifted since President Trump made demonizing immigrants the centerpiece of his second term. NPR's Adrian Florido reports.
ADRIAN FLORIDO, BYLINE: In January of last year, Salil Maniktahla was having dinner with a friend at a restaurant in Arlington, Virginia, when a man he did not know came up, gave him a bone crusher handshake and started spewing threats.
SALIL MANIKTAHLA: He's like, you know, Trump is president now, and you need to go back to your country. We're going to get you deported. I'm going to wait for you outside.
FLORIDO: The police came. Maniktahla pressed charges. He's Indian American. It wasn't the first time in his life he'd been the target of hateful speech. But it was the first time someone had threatened him with deportation.
MANIKTAHLA: Before that, it was always just, you know, go back to your country. Now it was like this, like, we'll send you back to your country - which is not my country, which is a part that's really kind of annoying and pisses me off, right? Like, I was born here in the U.S.
FLORIDO: Maniktahla reported the incident to Stop AAPI Hate, a nonprofit that began tracking hate acts against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders during the COVID pandemic. In a new report, the group found that for the first time, most of the people reporting a hate act now say the aggressor made some kind of anti-immigrant remark. In the first half of this year, that was true in more than 60% of reported cases. And many of these incidents now also include threats of deportation. Cynthia Choi cofounded Stop AAPI Hate.
CYNTHIA CHOI: We see time and time again bad actors mimicking what they've heard from the most powerful person in this country, Trump. And so this parroting, you know, I'm glad Trump is going to deport you or I can't wait to report you to ICE.
FLORIDO: Choi says it shows how demonizing political rhetoric trickles down into real people's lives.
CHOI: We are seeing some really dangerous trends that we should all be concerned about as Americans.
FLORIDO: Russell Jeung is a sociologist at San Francisco State University. It reminds him of earlier eras in history, when anti-Asian policies like the Chinese Exclusion Act emboldened vigilante attacks.
RUSSELL JEUNG: There's a clear linkage in the past of government policy signaling to the public that they, too, can exclude, harass and use violence to drive people out.
FLORIDO: A Korean American woman named Debbie reported an incident in March. She asked that NPR use just her first name because the man she reported lives in her neighborhood and she fears for her family's safety. She had taken her three kids to a playground. The man let his two German Shepherds off leash. Her son got scared. She told the man that dogs weren't allowed off leash and pointed out the posted signs.
DEBBIE: And he immediately launched into just the most offensive comments. He said, why don't you go back to your country where you eat dogs?
FLORIDO: Debbie says no one had ever told her to go back to her country. She was born and raised in the U.S. But what most disturbed her was his remark about eating dogs. President Trump has accused some immigrants of that.
DEBBIE: I think that was the part that was shocking to me. Like, it's not just our president who says this. Like, people are now saying this to people in the street in Santa Monica, in California.
FLORIDO: The incident traumatized her and her children. They sometimes see the man in the neighborhood.
DEBBIE: My youngest, like, will say, like, there's that man, Mama. There's that man. And I'll say, yeah, I know.
FLORIDO: She says they quietly turn away and keep to themselves.
Adrian Florido, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF BADBADNOTGOOD'S "TIMID, INTIMIDATING") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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