Center ties hate crimes to border debate

The center - an Alabama-based non-profit organization that tracks racist, anti-immigrant and other extremist groups - says in a new report that there were 803 such hate groups in the United States last year, up from 762 in 2004 and a 33 percent jump since 2000.

The center's report says the national debate that has focused on Hispanic immigration has been "the single most important factor" in spurring activity among hate groups and has given them "an issue with real resonance."

The debate over immigration "has been critical to the growth of the hate movement," says Mark Potok, editor of the center's quarterly report on extremists. "More and more groups are turning to immigration to help recruitment."

Potok says the center has seen increasing signs that groups that have encouraged a particularly aggressive response to illegal immigration are working with neo-Nazi organizations to try to intimidate illegal immigrants.

He cites groups such as Arizona-based Border Guardians, whose members burned a Mexican flag last month in front of that nation's consulate in Tucson.

Border Guardians is a relatively new organization and was not included on the center's 2005 list of hate groups. Its director, Laine Lawless, disputes the center's report last month that she has encouraged neo-Nazi groups to threaten and to steal money from illegal immigrants. In an interview, Lawless said her group supports only "lawful actions."

Lawless said she gets "contacted by all sorts of groups" and that "some of them are Nazis," but she said she does not recruit neo-Nazis. Lawless went on to describe the most vocal organizers of last month's immigrants' rights marches as militant "brown Nazis" whose activities threaten to ignite a "civil war" in America.

The building tension over illegal immigration's impact on America comes at a time when the FBI says that the number of hate-crime victims in 2004 - the last year for which figures are available - was 9,528, up nearly 5 percent from 2003.

The numbers don't approach the 12,020 hate-crime victims reported in 2001, when there were a rash of attacks against Muslims across the nation in the weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

There are about 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States.

Such immigrants - particularly Hispanics who cross from Mexico in search of work - also have become targets for private groups that have formed patrols along the southwestern border, usually against the wishes of law enforcement.

One of those groups is American Border Patrol. Its efforts have included rounding up illegal immigrants and turning them over to law enforcement. The Southern Poverty Law Center has accused ABP of abusing and illegally detaining immigrants, and the center lists ABP as a hate group.

ABP's director, Glenn Spencer, is a vocal critic of illegal immigration but says his group has done nothing wrong.

"Our borders are unprotected, and the (U.S.) Border Patrol is derelict in its duty," Spencer says. "We are trying to help by any means necessary