JAN. 9, 2004
Dateland, Ariz.
Pedro Corzo, a Cuban-born regional manager for Del Monte Fresh Produce, is gunned down by two Missouri residents — 16-year-old Joshua Aston and his 24-year-old cousin Justin Harrison — who traveled with Aston’s younger brother, 15-year-old Nicholas Aston, to a remote section of southern Arizona with the specific intent of randomly killing Mexicans. The brothers shaved their heads before embarking on their odyssey. Corzo was ambushed after he stopped at a roadblock the group constructed from boulders. Joshua Aston, the ringleader, is later tried as an adult and receives two life sentences for the murder. Harrison also is sentenced to life. Charges are eventually dropped against the younger Aston brother.
DEC. 29, 2004
Redlands, Calif.
Two Latino men and a Latina woman are beaten and kicked in the parking lot of a strip club by a “gang of about 10 skinheads,” as later reported by the San Bernardino County Sun. The neo-Nazi skinheads yell racial slurs at their victims, prompting the Redlands police chief to declare that hate crime charges will be pursued if and when the perpetrators are caught.
MAY 7, 2005
Maryville, Tenn.
A Mexican grocery store is vandalized by five white men who shatter windows, damage a refrigerator and spray-paint neo-Nazi symbols, causing over $17,000 in damage. Two men — Thomas Lovett and Jacob Reynolds — eventually plead guilty and are each sentenced to six months in prison.
FEB. 17, 2005
Fabens, Texas
Osvaldo Aldrete-Dávila, who is unarmed and fleeing apprehension on foot, is shot at 15 times by two U.S. Border Patrol agents, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. One bullet strikes Aldrete-Dávila in the buttocks, severs his urethra and lodges in his groin. Though seriously wounded, he manages to escape into Mexico.
Though the border patrol officers later find that the van driven by Aldrete-Dávila contained a shipment of marijuana, they are unaware of this fact when they open fire. Ramos and Compean attempt to cover up their actions by cleaning up the spent shell casings and failing to report the use of their firearms to their superiors, as required by Border Patrol regulations. The two agents also fail to report the shooting in their incident reports. El Paso Border Patrol Sector Chief Luis Barker later testifies that Compean told Barker that he and Ramos covered up the shooting because they “knew [they] were going to get in trouble.”
After the shooting comes to light a month later, Ramos and Compean are arrested and eventually convicted by a federal jury of felony assault charges, discharging a firearm in a crime of violence, civil rights violations, and obstruction of justice. They’re sentenced to 11 and 12 years in prison, respectively.
Ramos and Compean will eventually be transformed by a major right-wing misinformation campaign into high-profile martyrs of the anti-immigration movement. The agents, for their part, will remain unrepentant. Ramos tells a Texas Monthly writer in 2007 that Aldrete-Dávila “got what he deserved.”
JULY 12, 2005
Patchogue, N.Y.
A 61-year-old Ecuadorean immigrant is badly beaten by three white men as he pushes a shopping cart through the streets collecting cans. Before the attack, the man was asked if he had a green card. “Then they started pummeling him,” Suffolk County Hate Crimes Det. Robert Reecks tells reporters. The man, whose name is not made public, suffers a broken eye socket and facial bruises.
