The COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act at Five: Progress Undercut by Anti-immigrant Hate and the Attack on Civil Rights
Blog
May 20, 2026
By: Sim J. Singh Attariwala and Vivian Lee Adkins
The March 2021 Atlanta spa shootings created the political urgency that led Congress to pass the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, which included the Khalid Jabara and Heather Heyer NO HATE Act. While the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act was a direct response to the surge in anti-Asian hate during the pandemic, the Jabara Heyer NO HATE Act was also the culmination of years of advocacy led by civil rights organizations, including Advancing Justice | AAJC, and efforts long championed by congressional partners.
The COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act was precipitated by inflammatory rhetoric against China. Anti-Asian hate intensified when President Trump blamed China for the pandemic’s onset in the United States. Discrimination and other acts of hate then impacted more Asian American, Pacific Islander, and Native Hawaiian communities with not only threats but also acts of violence, including shoving, beatings, stabbings, being set on fire, and murder. Tragically, the Atlanta spa mass shooting on March 16, 2021, targeting Asian women, galvanized federal policy change after 8 people died. AAJC, along with other leading national civil rights organizations, worked to help bring this legislation to passage alongside Representative Grace Meng, Senator Mazie Hirono, and the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus. Five years on, progress has been made, but work remains to be done to protect all communities against hate crimes.
Key Improvements
The law requires the US Attorney General to issue guidance to state and local law enforcement on hate crimes reporting and prevention; authorizes funding for state-run hate crime reporting hotlines and websites; expands language access so communities with limited English proficiency can better report crimes; and supports community-based organizations doing the prevention and response work that government cannot do alone. Embedded within it was the Khalid Jabara and Heather Heyer NO HATE Act, which provided grants for state and local law enforcement to address hate crimes and support agencies upgrading to the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS), the modern data infrastructure on which accurate hate crime statistics depend.
The Act’s most concrete achievements have been in hate crime reporting options for victims and law enforcement data systems, and doing so without creating any new federal criminal powers. There have been improvements, with more law enforcement agencies participating in hate crime reporting, and NIBRS has improved the granularity of data available on hate crime offenses. State-level hotlines have expanded access to reporting for communities that would rarely walk into a police station. States like California, Illinois, Washington, and Nevada have established non-law enforcement-based response mechanisms, creating reporting and support options better aligned with the needs and trust levels of immigrant and marginalized communities. Language-accessible public education campaigns have reached communities, including information on reporting hate crimes now available in 24 languages, including Chinese, Hindi, Gujarati, Hmong, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Lao, Nepali, Punjabi, Tagalog, Thai, Urdu, and Vietnamese.
What the Data Actually Shows
AAJC’s April 2026 analysis of preliminary 2025 FBI hate crime figures reveals that while overall hate crime incidents declined 9% nationally from 11,679 to 10,634, these headline numbers mask “persistent, shifting, and in some cases sharply rising threats” against specific communities. And while the Act has made important strides in data collection and reporting, improvements in participation do not resolve a deeper limitation: FBI hate crime data has historically undercounted the true scale of the problem. The most recent federal survey places the total number of violent hate crimes closer to 250,000 victimizations annually. Community-based underreporting to law enforcement happens for a number of reasons, including fear of retaliation, distrust of law enforcement, being re-traumatized by the criminal justice process, and a belief that law enforcement will not investigate the matter, among others. As Advancing Justice | AAJC warned in our 2024 report, we must prepare for a likely decline in reported hate crimes even if the actual occurrence of hate crimes stays the same or increases, and the 2025 preliminary data suggests that conditions that were warned against are coming to pass. Anti-Asian hate crimes remained elevated at 318 incidents, still 2.4 times the pre-pandemic average. Anti-Sikh, anti-Hindu, and anti-Buddhist hate crimes all reached record highs. Anti-Latino hate crimes rose to their highest level in more than a decade. Importantly, increases in reported hate crimes — or sustained elevated levels — do not, on their own, indicate policy failure; they can in some cases reflect improved reporting mechanisms, expanded language access, and greater survivor willingness to come forward in response to longstanding undercounting.
Stop AAPI Hate’s 2026 nationally representative survey of 1,378 AAPI adults found that about half (49%) experienced a hate act in 2025 due to their race, ethnicity, or nationality, a rate statistically similar to 53% in 2024 and 49% in 2023. This demonstrates that anti-AAPI hate has remained entrenched and widespread for three consecutive years. The TAAF 2026 STAATUS Indexreinforces this picture: over one in five AAPIs report being insulted or harassed because of their race in the past year, while 44% of AAPIs say they feel worried, a higher rate than any other racial or ethnic group surveyed.
The sustained gap between official FBI data and community-reported experience is itself a finding. When nearly a quarter million Americans, and half of AAPI adults report experiencing hate while official statistics show declining numbers, the data infrastructure is not working as designed. A true measure of success is not whether reported numbers rise or fall, but whether victims have accessible, trusted pathways to report harm; whether data accurately reflects lived experience; and whether perpetrators face meaningful accountability when survivors seek it.
Federal Immigration and Civil Rights Rollbacks Are Undermining Community Safety
Any accounting of the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act at five years must confront a central paradox: the communities most targeted by anti-Asian hate are now the communities least able to access the systems the Act built to protect. The Trump administration’s actions have been sweeping: banning travel or freezing visas for 13 Asian countries and two Pacific Island countries; imposing a $100,000 fee for H-1B visas, ending temporary protected status for Afghan, Burmese, and Nepalese people; and authorizing ICE agents to raid schools, hospitals, houses of worship, and other sensitive locations. At the same time, the administration has rolled back language access requirements across federal agencies, placing victims with limited English proficiency at a further disadvantage and weakening the very structures designed to interrupt hate and support reporting. Additionally, federal efforts to combat extremist violence were scaled back, and President Trump pardoned white nationalists from the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. The Trump Justice Department has also targeted the Southern Poverty Law Center for its work in taking down hate groups.
Hate Crime Prevention Grants Canceled
On April 22, 2025, the Trump administration sent termination notices to recipients of grants authorized under both the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act and the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act itself. These were grants that Congress had authorized, appropriated, and that organizations had built programs around in good faith. The administration also moved to eliminate the DOJ’s Community Relations Service, established by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which has provided mediation and conflict resolution to communities facing hate-related tension for over sixty years. As of this anniversary, the grants have not been restored.
As documented in AAJC’s 2025 preliminary data analysis, the DOJ has simultaneously transferred millions of dollars from hate crime prevention grants to other activities while failing to solicit applications for many congressionally mandated funding opportunities for more than an entire fiscal year. Diminished DOJ accountability over local policing, including the dismissal or rollback of federal consent decrees, has further eroded trust in law enforcement. Together, these actions are undermining confidence in the very institutions on which hate crime reporting and response depend.
Overbroad Immigration Enforcement
Overbroad immigration enforcement actions are increasing anxiety in immigrant communities and raising serious questions about whether law enforcement can be trusted when reporting crimes, including hate crimes. Aggressive tactics, often involving masked officers and coordination with local or state law enforcement, create fear and confusion that discourage individuals from seeking help. The predictable result is a decline in crime reporting in the very communities most vulnerable to harm. Compounding this crisis, impersonators posing as immigration or law enforcement officials are targeting individuals based on their perceived nationality, race, ethnicity, and/or religion, further terrorizing communities and eroding trust in legitimate law enforcement responses to community safety concerns. At the same time, vigilante reporting platforms encourage the public to police one another, and scams targeting individuals based on perceived immigration status deepen fear of engagement with any official system.
These conditions, not community‑based prevention or survivor‑centered responses, are what most directly undermine deterrence, depress reporting, and weaken public trust.
State Targeting of the Asian American Community
The number of Asian people arrested by ICE is six times higher than the arrests under the previous administration. Similarly, detentions are six times higher, and deportations of Asian people is about nine times higher. Polling indicates that half of all Asian and Pacific Islander adults in the U.S. either know someone who has been affected or have been personally affected by anti-immigrant policies or sentiment. A record number of ICE impersonation incidents in 2025, documented in AAJC’s preliminary analysis, saw bad actors deliberately terrorizing communities perceived as “not American” based on race, ethnicity, religion, or language. This climate of fear has led to a chilling effect on hate crime reporting, undermining the very data collection and response infrastructure the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act sought to strengthen.
Surge in Anti-South Asian Hate
While anti‑Asian hate surged during the pandemic through scapegoating tied to COVID‑19, the threat landscape has since broadened for our community. Although FBI hate crime data disaggregates religious bias, it remains limited in capturing the distinct and overlapping ways South Asian communities are targeted — particularly where race, religion, and immigration status converge, and where political rhetoric actively demonizes and scapegoats these communities.
Community‑based reporting and online trend analysis fill this gap. Data from Stop AAPI Hate and Moonshot show sharp spikes in anti‑South Asian narratives online, closely tracking moments when political rhetoric demonizes immigrants, and “foreign” workers — reinforcing bias, legitimizing harassment, and translating digital hate into real‑world harm.
While some political actors have started to distance themselves from mass deportation rhetoric, many of them continue to use Islamophobia and national security and “foreign threat” narratives to mobilize voters. This rhetoric, like the explicitly immigration-focused mass deportation rhetoric, is toxic to our communities.
Community‑Based Responses and Victim‑Centered Accountability
The COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act’s investment in community-based approaches recognized what advocates had long argued: that criminal prosecution is a limited and often counterproductive tool, particularly in communities with warranted distrust of law enforcement. A joint Stanford Law School and Brennan Center report evaluated programs in New York City and Oakland and found that restorative and community-based approaches “may offer a way to identify and mend the unique individual and community harms caused by hate crimes, while demanding meaningful accountability for those who cause harm.”
The Aspen Institute’s research on restorative justice and hate crimereinforces this picture: restorative justice can address underlying issues of identity and bias motivation, providing harmed parties with the acknowledgment, validation, and reparation they might otherwise seek from a criminal conviction. The goal is victim agency, not a predetermined pathway. Communities concerned about rising hate crimes can work with AAJC to obtain technical assistance as they assess, design, and refine solutions that best meet their local needs.
Restorative justice is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Victims and the targeted community want and deserve full accountability, and their voices must be centered. Some survivor families who experienced anti-Asian hate violence described feeling abandoned by a system that prioritized diversion and leniency over the timely trials and proportionate accountability they sought. There are arguments for and against each approach, but what matters most is that the response is driven by the victim’s own choices. While there is some research that questions the effectiveness of these programs, more research is needed to better develop and refine how restorative justice is implemented. A 2025 meta-analysis reviewing forty years of research reflects both the promise and the limitations of the current evidence base.
The research supports that community-based approaches require properly trained facilitators, cultural competency, and sustained organizational infrastructure to function. The community-based organizations best positioned to offer non-carceral alternatives, those running restorative programs, healing circles, bystander intervention training, and victim navigation services, are precisely the organizations whose federal grants were terminated by the Trump Administration in April 2025. AAJC challenged these cancellations by filing a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice. The question is not whether non‑carceral approaches “work,” but whether governments are meeting their obligations to fund, oversee, and integrate the full range of responses that evidence shows are necessary to address hate crimes effectively. Without sustained investment in community-based approaches to preventing hate crimes, public safety is at risk.
Five Years Later
The COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act was an important step in addressing hate not just against Asian American communities, but also in improving the federal structures to support hate crime prevention initiatives. It expanded language access, helped improve crime statistical data infrastructure, created state-run hotlines, and permitted greater opportunities for community-based responses to prevent hate. Unfortunately, those policy changes came only after Asian Americans experienced horrific acts of hate and discrimination. Policymakers must heed the lessons learned and not wait to address the life-shattering consequences of hate.
Anti-Asian hate has not yet gone down to pre-pandemic levels, and it may not truly get there soon due to xenophobic political rhetoric and ever-shifting targeted communities. We anticipate that reported declines in anti‑Asian hate, alongside other targeted communities, will reflect growing mistrust in law enforcement rather than a true reduction in harm. Today, we see intensified hate focused on South Asian and Muslim communities, and renewed anti-immigrant political rhetoric that is now official government policy. More must be done to support community organizations working to address hate, especially when targeted communities are also the most afraid to report incidents to law enforcement.
On this fifth anniversary, we must all recommit to the work the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act and Khalid-Jabara NO HATE Act intended: accurate data, language access, community-based response, greater accountability, and advocacy for policy change, including the expansion of state-run hotlines and websites. Advancing Justice | AAJC is committed to doing that work alongside our Community Partners, and to holding our federal government accountable in keeping all communities safe from hate and discrimination. This is precisely why Advancing Justice | AAJC has sued the Trump Administration for canceling hate crime prevention grants and supports the bipartisan Improving Reporting to Prevent Hate Act (IRPHA). Specifically, the bill would condition federal funding to law enforcement agencies on credible hate crime reporting from jurisdictions serving populations over 100,000.
Advancing Justice | AAJC also continues to invest directly in community safety and resilience, providing bystander intervention training, operating a national community reporting portal through Stand Against Hatred, and maintaining the Asian Resource Hub with up-to-date information and resources for individuals and families impacted by anti-Asian hate. Together, these efforts reflect a commitment not only to better data and accountability but to ensure that those most affected by hate have accessible, trusted pathways to the support they need.
Report hate at StandAgainstHatred.org | Technical assistance: AntiHate@AdvancingJustice-AAJC.org | advancingjustice-aajc.org
