A routine shopping trip at a Montgomery County store turned into a racist rant against a Puerto Rican woman.
Johanny Santana said the caught-on-camera verbal attack happened last week as she waited in line at the store in Abington. Another another woman began cursing because a grandfather and his young grandson were speaking Spanish, and the abuse only escalated from there, Santana said.
"The boy comes back and asks another question [to the cashier] and that's when the woman, who was next to me, started cursing," Santana recalled.
That's when Santana took out her cellphone and started recording.
In the video, the other woman tells Santana she should be deported. "You shouldn't be in this country," she says, later adding, "I hope Trump deports you." The woman then flashes a dollar bill at Santana and says that the money in her hands is legal and doesn't come from drug sales.
Puerto Ricans are American citizens, have free movement within the U.S. mainland and use American currency.
Santana said the argument continued, with Santana reacting with insults of her own.
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"I regret it because I didn't want to tell her that. I felt powerless because I didn't speak English well enough to be able to properly respond to her," she said.
This latest incident is one of many racist attacks that have been caught on camera in recent years.
Hate crime reports in the U.S. increased by 17% between 2016 and 2017, according to the latest figures from the Federal Bureau of Investigations. About 59.6% of those were motivated by race, ethnicity or ancestry, the FBI data shows.
