Mahud Villalaz, the Latino U.S. citizen attacked with acid in a vicious hate crime earlier this month, said his attacker told him to “go back to your country” as he gave him second-degree burns across his face. The words Villalaz heard are becoming frighteningly common, new research has found.
Huffington Post has documented 800 instances across 49 states and Washington, D.C. since the start of Donald Trump’s presidency where attackers, 90% of whom were white, “communicated some variation of ‘go back’ to their victims.” Nearly 100 instances were part of a physical assault, and three were, horrifically, part of a deadly incident. “All told, four people spent their final moments having heard their killer say some variation of ‘go back’ or ‘get out.’”
From the start of his presidential campaign, Trump singled out Mexicans for attack, which is reflected in the data collected by Huffington Post: “One hundred and fifteen of the perpetrators said ‘Go back to your country’; 117 chose ‘Go back to Mexico’; 59 selected ‘Go back to Africa’; 21 opted for ‘Go back to China’; and 19 said ‘Get out of my country.’”
An actual leader would take some sort of action to stomp on hate speech targeting Americans, but the United States has Trump for a “leader,” and he himself has spewed “get out” rhetoric dozens of times at his rallies, a separate analysis from August found.
“Telling people to ‘go back’ is also the animating idea of ‘Make America Great Again,’” said Huffington Post reporter Christopher Mathias, who helped compile the data. “We are entering a very dangerous election cycle, when Trump will ramp up the racist rhetoric. The media should be diligent about documenting hate incidents.”