Hate crimes rising since Trump's election, activists tell AG Lisa Madigan

At a summit of civil rights leaders Thursday called by the state's attorney general, local activists say they are seeing an increase of hate crime incidents in the Chicago area in the wake of President Donald Trump's immigration enforcement policies.

Hate incidents targeted toward immigrant and religious minority groups in the months since Trump's election have sent a ripple of fear through those communities, whose members are uneasy about partaking in normal activities like attending synagogue or crossing the Canadian border. Activists report instances of Muslim women having their scarves pulled off and say graffiti with Trump's name paired with a swastika were found in a suburban library bathroom on five different occasions.

More than 1,000 reports of hate incidents in the United States were collected by the Southern Poverty Law Center in the month since Donald Trump's election, and data released in January by the FBI show there were 5,850 hate crime incidents nationally in 2015, up 6.8 percent from 5,479 in 2014.

In the Chicago area, the Council on American-Islamic Relations reported 400 hate crimes in 2016, and has counted 175 incidents so far in 2017, just two months into the new year. The organization could not immediately provide a monthly comparison to 2016. But Maaria Mozaffur, a legal adviser with the organization, said members have noticed a spike in bullying and travel-related hate incidents this year.

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