Latino Hate Crimes Rose in Over a Decade, FBI Reports
The FBI headquarters is seen on February 2, 2018 in Washington, DC. President Donald Trump contemplating the possible release of a highly controversial Republican memo alleging the FBI abused its surveillance tools. Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Report of hate crimes against Latinos have increased in 2019, including the El Paso shooting last year. The overall number of hate-motivated killings reports have increased since data was collected starting in 1990s, according to a Federal Bureau of Investigation's report.

Among the 51 hate-motivated killings that were reported last year, 22 of the victims died in the El Paso shooting on Aug. 3, 2019.

This was almost half of the total number of the hate crimes reported.

Most of the victims in the El Paso shooting were Latinos, as reported by the NBC News.

Officials said that the gunman was targeting Hispanics when he went to El Paso and shot multiple people at Walmart.

The massacre was probed as domestic terrorism. Officials said that before the attack, the suspect had posted a racist statement, attacking the invasion of Mexican immigrants in the United States.

FBI said that reported anti-Hispanic hate crimes rose to 527 last year, from 485 in 2018.

This was an 8.7 percent increase in the reported hate crimes.

On the other hand, the reported number of hate crimes against Black people have slightly dropped from 1,943 to 1,930.

However, hate crimes based on religion increased by seven percent. Most of the hate crimes were targeting Jews and Jewish institutions.

Overall, 55.8 percent of the reported hate crimes were motivated by bias against race, ethnicity, and ancestry.

The FBI's yearly report identifies hate crimes as those crimes motivated by person's race, religion, or sexual orientation.

Improved reporting of hate crimes may contribute to the rising numbers; however, law enforcement authorities and other advocacy groups have little doubt that more hate crimes are being done.

FBI's report is based on voluntary reporting of police agencies across the country.

In the previous year, only 2,172 law enforcement agencies reported hate crime data to the FBI, according the agency.

This was out of about 15,000 participating agencies across the country.

Nikki Singh of the Sikh Coalition said that even as the deadly hate crimes increase, fewer law enforcement agencies are electing to report the data to the FBI.

"Especially given the dangerously divisive political climate of the past four years, we should be reckoning with the problem of hate in America - not continuing to sweep it under the rug," Singh was quoted in an NPR report.

NPR report said that there is another persistent problem, which is the categorization of the targeted groups.

The Arab American Institute noted that the FBI records just one anti-Hispanic homicide in 2019 as it left out the El Paso attack.

This despite being reported as the deadliest anti-Latino attack in American history.

Residents said the nation had to face the racism behind the largest killing of Latinos following the attack in El Paso.

Marisa Limón Garza, deputy director of the Hope Border Institute, said that it was clear that it was not just a random attack.

"It's clear that this cannot be called someone with a mental illness. This illness is racism and xenophobia," Garza was quoted in an NBC News report.