Yesterday, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) met with the United States Attorney General Eric Holder. The CHC and the Attorney General discussed several important topics, including increased hate crimes against Latinos, voting rights and voter intimidation concerns, recent Supreme Court decisions regarding small business contracting and prosecution of undocumented workers, and diversity of the Department of Justice’s workforce.
“Today’s meeting with the Attorney General was a very positive and productive conversation and provided the CHC an opportunity to discuss several areas of concern for our Members and the Latino community at large,” said Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, Chairwoman of the CHC. “We were extremely pleased to hear that progress is being made in several areas of concern for our Members. We are looking forward to the opportunity to work with the DOJ in stemming the recent rise in hate crimes committed against Latinos, which has become a symptom the rise in hate speech and xenophobia in some circles.”
The Members of the CHC raised the issue of the hate crime committed against Luis Ramirez in Shenandoah, PA, and will be following up with a letter requesting further investigation of the issue. They were pleased that the situation was not unfamiliar to the Attorney General.
Congressman Charles A. Gonzalez, 1st Vice Chair of the CHC and Chair of the group’s Civil Rights, Veterans and Worker Protections Task Force, stated, “our meeting with Attorney General Holder was productive and fruitful. An indication, I hope, of what our overall relationship will be with the Department of Justice under this Administration. We covered topics such as voting rights, immigration and hate crimes, in addition to others in our discussion, and he committed himself to working with us to address our community’s concerns. I, for one, am going to take him up on his offer to continue the dialogue we started today and help him make the Department of Justice an agency our community can believe in and trust once again.”
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