The slogans painted on the walls spewed contempt, aversion and hostility: "Illegal aliens steal jobs," "Illegal immigration = Holocaust, terrorism feeds it," "Se regresan a su hediondo, sucio, moreno país, ahorita" ["Return to your stinking, filthy dark brown country right now,"] and "Remove [the graffiti] at your own peril; you will be killed."
The graffiti appeared during the last weekend of February in a Hispanic neighborhood of Greenville, one of the main cities in South Carolina, a state where severe measures against undocumented immigrants have been approved, and where the bill known as SB 20 is making its way through the legislature, a law modeled on Arizona's SB 1070, which criminalizes those without papers.
Worries about these events were reflected in the Spanish-language weeklies published in Greenville. The newspaper Latino headlined its front-page story: "Climate of Hate Increases," and La Nación Hispana carried the editorial: "A More Racist State," by Jo Dell Pickens, who was a member of South Carolina's Commission on Minority Affairs.
The graffiti that threatened with death anyone who tried to remove it, the one that compared the presence of immigrants to the genocide of Jews, that used the word terrorism, and the fact that one of the slogans was painted on the side of a Christian church, reveal how the debate over immigration has been taken completely out of context by extremist individuals and groups.
Pastor Alex Girón of the Plenitud Cristiana Church told the media that this is the fourth time the walls of his church have been the target of vandalism with offensive phrases. The first time was in 2008, when the phrase was "Go to the devil."
But the rejection of undocumented immigrants in South Carolina has not come solely from the shadows of the approximately 30 hate groups that exist in the state, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Actions against immigrants who have no papers have also been initiated by public entities which have made their repudiation official.
In 2004, three municipalities on the South Carolina coast, Myrtle Beach, Hilton Head and Beaufort County, proposed measure to prevent undocumented immigrants from opening businesses or industries.
In 2006, Hilton Head proposed revoking the operating licenses of businesses that hired workers who lacked legal immigration status.
In the summer of 2008, the authorities in Beaufort County, South Carolina, initiated a program of cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) called Operation Surge, which meant there was a period of terror during which 300 undocumented immigrants were arrested and stuffed into the local jail.
Since the ICE training academy trains its agents in Charleston, new experimental programs and operations targeting undocumented immigrants radiate out from there into the neighboring towns and counties.
For example, South Carolina was one of the first states to apply the Criminal Alien Program (CAP).
In June, 2008, former Governor Mark Sanford, famous for his ill-advised secret trips to Argentina, signed the South Carolina Illegal Immigration Reform Act. This law made the state the first one in the country to explicitly prohibit the enrollment of undocumented students in institutions of higher learning.
The legislation [also] made it a felony to transport or offer shelter to the undocumented.
It ordered the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) to arrange with the federal Department of Homeland Security for local police officers to implement federal immigration laws.
It authorized the Commission on Minority Affairs (CMA) to operate a free twenty-four-hour telephone hot line and a website for reports on anyone who violates the immigration laws.
It prohibited sanctuary cities, and it mandated that all public and private businesses and offices use the E-Verify system to evaluate their employees' immigration status.
Thus, it is not strange that a report by the Pew Hispanic Center concludes that the undocumented population in South Carolina has diminished by 21.4 percent, from 70,000 in 2007 to 55,000 in 2010.
Nonetheless, the surprise will be the results of the 2010 Census, which will indicate that the Hispanic population of this state stands at more than 203,827 individuals.
At any rate, it is excessive that, on top of all the restrictions, to add an atmosphere of terror for the almost one hundred thousand Hispanics who were born abroad.
Rafael Prieto Zartha is an independent journalist who writes about immigration and other topics related to Hispanics. He is the director of the weekly paper Mi Gente in Charlotte, North Carolina.
