The Department of Justice has launched a cross-agency initiative aimed at addressing gaps in hate crimes reporting as part of the Biden administration’s efforts to crack down on anti-AAPI xenophobia, the White House announced Tuesday.
- Attorney General Merrick Garland is launching a 30-day expedited review of the agency’s actions to address the surge in violence against the AAPI community, and the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division reconvened its Hate Crimes Enforcement and Prevention Initiative.
The FBI will also publish a centralized website to track and spotlight anti-Asian hate crimes, a move that has been called for by advocacy groups.
- In the absence of accurate federal data, the group Stop AAPI Hate gained prominence in recent months for its anti-Asian hate incident reports.
- To improve access to hate crime resources, the Department of Justice’s hate crimes website has also been updated with four new languages: Chinese, Korean, Tagalog, and Vietnamese.
The FBI also announced that it would provide special training to its state and local partners.
- Law enforcement across the nation will attend “civil rights training events” as part of the initiative, and the FBI will establish a new curriculum focused on hate crimes in general.
- The FBI and the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division will partner with the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA) to hold a panel discussion "focused on improving efforts to combat anti-Asian hate incidents."
In a White House fact sheet, the Biden administration also said that…
- The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will allocate $49.5 million to creating culturally specific services and programs for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, including those in the Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities.
- The White House will establish a subcommittee on Structural Drivers of Health Inequity and Xenophobia, attached to the HHS’s COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force, to ensure that the administration’s response to the virus mitigates anti-Asian xenophobia and advances health equity for Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders.
- The White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (WHIAAPI) would be reinstated with a focus on anti-Asian violence.
