Representative Espaillat Leads Effort to Urge Federal Agencies to Combat Hate Crimes on College Campuses

WASHINGTON, DC — Today, Representative Adriano Espaillat (NY-13) sent a congressional letter to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) asking these agencies to release timely hate crime data and urging them to redouble their efforts to protect students and faculty from hate crimes following the recent spike in anti-religious hate crimes on U.S. college campuses. The letter was endorsed by the Anti-Defamation League and was signed by several other key Members of Congress. 

“The current surge in Islamophobic and antisemitic hate crimes on college campuses, particularly since the recent outbreak of the war in the Middle East, necessitates a comprehensive response from federal law enforcement,” said Espaillat. “In December 2023, I introduced the Combating Hate Across Campus Act (H.R. 6883), which would require college campuses to independently track, record, and report information on hate crimes to local and federal law enforcement. This latest letter has also received a tremendous level of support from colleagues and advocates who remain united around the need for our federal agencies to track, prosecute, and prevent these types of shameful, targeted attacks that have recently occurred on campuses around the nation.” 

As the Members stated in the letter, “we are incredibly concerned by the bevy of recent reporting indicating an alarming surge of hateful antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents on U.S. college campuses in the days and months following October 7th, 2023. In turn, we write today to solicit data on these incidents, to procure information about the steps that the DOJ and FBI have taken to proactively respond to these new outbreaks of violence on our nation’s university campuses, and to encourage additional efforts from the DOJ and FBI to protect our nation’s students from religious-based hate crimes and all other forms of hate,” stated the Members. 

Click here to read the Espaillat letter in its entirety. 

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Representative Espaillat is the first Dominican American to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives and his congressional district includes Harlem, East Harlem, West Harlem, Hamilton Heights, Washington Heights, Inwood, Marble Hill and the north-west Bronx. First elected to Congress in 2016, Representative Espaillat is serving his fourth term in Congress. Representative Espaillat currently serves as a member of the influential U.S. House Committee on Appropriations responsible for funding the federal government’s vital activities and serves as Ranking Member of the Legislative Branch Subcommittee of the committee during the 118th Congress. He is also a member of the House Budget Committee and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC), where he serves in a leadership role as the Deputy Chair as well as Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI). Rep. Espaillat is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) and serves as a Senior Whip of the Democratic Caucus. To find out more about Rep. Espaillat, visit online at https://espaillat.house.gov/.

Media inquiries: Candace Person at Candace.Person@mail.house.gov