Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke Delivers Remarks at the UnidosUS Annual Conference

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery

Good afternoon. I want to first start off by thanking Daniel Ortega for that most gracious introduction. And I also want to thank UnidosUS. I want to thank you for your leadership, your advocacy and for the invitation to be with you today.

As mentioned, my name is Kristen Clarke, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division at the United States Department of Justice. And it is such an honor to be here to address fellow foot soldiers in the fight against racism and discrimination.

Let me begin by expressing my immense gratitude for all of the work that you do to break through social and economic barriers affecting Latino communities. Thanks to you, more Latinos and English learners have access to high-quality education, to health coverage, to tax credits, to home ownership and to work. They can obtain clear, comprehensive immigration guidance and can exercise the most fundamental of rights in any democracy: the right to vote.

At the Justice Department, we are keenly aware that Latinos make up nearly one fifth of our country’s population, and that the Latino community is the second-largest ethnic group in the country today. This means that all of the work to advance civil rights and equal justice that I will speak to today affects this community. And I want you to know that we are using every tool available to confront injustice.          

Hate and racism have fanned into flames in recent years, with hate crimes that target people for race or ethnicity making up the highest percentage of these crimes — more than all other categories combined. That is why we have stepped up our efforts to combat this pernicious issue.

Bigotry, racism and hatred have no place in our society today. Since January of 2021, we have charged more than 120 defendants with hate crimes in over 110 cases. This includes securing 90 consecutive life sentences for the man who killed 23 people and wounded 22 others in the heinous and tragic El Paso Walmart mass shooting in 2019. This shooting was one of the most horrific acts of white nationalist driven violence in modern times. I have spent time with and looked into the eyes of the survivors. Their pain is palpable. We remember those who lost their lives and the survivors and will ensure that they are never forgotten. We have also secured convictions and severe sentences for a Texas man who used the Grindr app to target gay men, many of them Latino, to rob and assault them.

We also prosecute perpetrators of human trafficking and forced labor schemes — crimes that target vulnerable people, and that too often prey on people from Latin America. We recently secured convictions of three racketeers and the owner of a farm labor company who had exploited Mexican H-2A workers, promising access to the American dream but instead subjecting them to grueling farm labor for upwards of seven days a week, confiscating their passports and threatening them with arrest and deportation. We also secured a conviction of three men who leveraged cruelty, violence, threats of violence and false debts to force Cuban women into commercial sex. Not only is such a scheme unlawful and dehumanizing, but it also terrorizes and dehumanizes the women, who are unable to break free. These men are now behind bars and must pay nearly half a million dollars of restitution to the survivors.

We’re also working to ensure constitutional policing across the country. And just last month, we released findings that the City of Phoenix and the Phoenix Police Department engage in conduct that deprives people of their rights under the Constitution and federal law. We found that the police department discriminates against Latino, Black and Native American people. For instance, though Hispanic and white people make up roughly even shares of the Phoenix population, the police department cites or arrests Hispanics for traffic offenses at three times the rate of white people and cites or arrests Hispanic people seven to 12 times as often for offenses such as squealing tires and improper window tinting.

We are also working to ensure that Latinos have access to economic opportunities. And one way that we are doing this work is by aggressively fighting modern-day redlining to ensure that all communities have equal access to banks and financial institutions. That’s why the Justice Department, under the leadership of Attorney General Merrick Garland, launched the nationwide Combating Redlining Initiative in 2021. To date, we have secured over $122 million in relief for impacted communities across the country. In fact, in 2023, we secured the largest redlining settlement in the department’s history — a $31 million settlement with City National Bank in Los Angeles for systematically denying mortgages to the Latinx and Black communities there. That relief is now being distributed through a loan subsidy fund that is helping to provide Latino families access to the American Dream.

We are also working to address predatory lending. For example, this past December we sued Colony Ridge, a Texas-based developer and lender, that was operating an illegal land sales scheme that targeted tens of thousands of Latino borrowers with false statements and predatory loans. Colony Ridge aggressively markets flood-prone land without water, sewer or electrical infrastructure to Spanish-speaking borrowers. Then the company pressures borrowers into mortgages that they can’t afford and asks them to sign closing documents that were entirely in English. Many of these loans ended in foreclosure, at which point the company repurchased the properties and sold them again to new Latino borrowers. The Justice Department and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are working together to end this illegal scheme and to obtain restitution for those who were scammed and victimized.

I would be remiss if I didn’t say a brief word about our work safeguard voting rights. For example, we secured a win in Arizona where we challenged a law that required people to list their birthplace and to provide unlawful and discriminatory proof of citizenship when registering to vote. In all, since January of 2021, we have filed 32 statements of interest in courts across the country to protect the right to vote, securing consent decrees in New Jersey and Rhode Island under the language access provisions of the Voting Rights Act to ensure that Spanish-language election materials are made available at the polls. This election season, as in every election season, we urge you to speak up and report potential discrimination complaints to the Justice Department. Every eligible Latino American in our country should be able to exercise their voice in our democracy.

And language should never be a barrier to exercising any of our fundamental civil rights. To that end, we have secured resolutions with state courts in Oklahoma, Texas, Florida, South Dakota and New York, to ensure that they provide free interpreter services and address other language barriers. We’ve worked with police department across the country to ensure that those who receive federal funds are able to serve and protect everyone in their community, including those who are limited English proficient.

I want to close by sharing the words of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, “There are no bystanders in life. Our humanity makes us each part of something greater than ourselves.”

I hope this convention has been a fountain of hope and rejuvenation for you. I hope you leave here inspired to find new ways to open up the gates of justice, opportunity and equity for Latino communities across our country. And I want you to know that the Justice Department will be standing beside you every step of the way. Thank you so much for having me here today.