Two self-proclaimed Donald Trump supporters have been sentenced to prison after pleading guilty to assaulting a homeless Latino man last August because they thought he was an undocumented immigrant.
Brothers Scott and Steven Leader “pled guilty to several felony charges, including assault and battery, intimidation, and civil rights violations,” according to the Boston Globe.
“Scott Leader, who prosecutors said has a history of hate crimes against minorities, was sentenced to three years in state prison. Steven Leader was sentenced to at least two years behind bars.”
In what remains one of the most brutal Trump-inspired attacks yet, the intoxicated men terrorized a sleeping Guillermo Rodriguez with a metal pipe, breaking his nose and leaving him with serious bruising across his ribs. They finished their heartless assault in an act of humiliation, by urinating on his face.
Police responding to the scene reported they found Rodriguez “laying on the ground, shaking, his face…soaking wet.” The brothers, witnesses say, were spotted “walking away laughing.” When they were finally arrested and questioned, the brothers told police that “Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported.”
Rodriguez, an immigrant originally from Mexico, is a legal resident of the United States.
“I cannot understand why they did this to me,” Rodriguez said in a statement to the Boston Globe. “I did not do anything to them and did not even know them. I have heard that they did this because of political rhetoric.”
“I came to this country many years ago and worked hard in the farm fields to provide produce to people here,” he added. “I actually became a permanent resident of this country years ago although if I had been undocumented, I still would not have deserved to have been beaten in this way.”
Reports state Scott Leader already had a record of racially-motivated crimes, berating a Middle Eastern man following the 9/11 attacks, and then harassing a group of Asian-Americans in 2005.
When initially informed of the attack against Rodriguez, Trump attempted to distance himself, but not before despicably telling reporters that his followers are simply “passionate.”
In the time since then, attacks on people of color at the hands of his supporters have only escalated, with Trump in fact encouraging the violence, saying that one Black Lives Matter demonstrator assaulted at his rally “should have been roughed up.”
We’ve continued to document Trump-inspired violence and verbal attacks, with incidents now recorded in over 20 states, on a “Trump Hate Map” here.
