The basic rights of indigenous Americans were infringed on. The United States erected an 18-feet-high wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, which severely impaired life of local Apache people. Indigenous women fell victim to violence of American soldiers. In border cities and townships like Juarez, more than 4,000 Indigenous women were killed or reported missing. The population of Indigenous youth accounts for less than 2 percent of the total youth population in the United States. But among those in jail, the Indigenous accounted for 15 to 20 percent and 30 percent of them received the toughest penalty. On April 15 2008, people of Yankton Siou ethnic group in South Dakota staged a peaceful demonstration against building a hoggery, which they considered highly pollutant. More than 70 officers from the county, state and federal law enforcement agencies, with the help of special police squad, police dogs, snipers as well as helicopters, cracked down on the peaceful protest. Thirty-eight people, including children and the elderly, were arrested. The United States deployed troops and built navy and air force bases in Guam, taking up one third of the land there. Local Chamoru people were victimized by the weapons left by U.S. army during World War II and nuclear tests. The incidence of rhino pharyngeal cancer among them is 1,999 percent higher than the average Americans.
Immigrants received inhumane treatment. Harriett Olson, deputy general secretary of the Women's Division of the General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church, said that once arrested, the illicit immigrants were always mistreated. They were often jailed with criminals, and denied fundamental human rights and basic medical service. Each year, dozens of them die in jail (The China Press, December 14, 2008). The Human Rights Watch said in June 2008 that the Department of Homeland Security had more than 30,000 individuals in detention, and that more than 80 immigrants have died in the last five years while in the care of the department or immediately after their release from custody, due to inconsistent standards of care and inadequate oversight (US: Protect Health of Immigration, http://www.hrw.org/en/news). According to a report by the New York Times, computer engineer Hiu Lui Ng who moved to New York from Hong Kong in 1992 was sent to detention center in 2007 after his visa expired, and was then jailed in three states in New England. He died in the custody in August 2008 with his spine fractured and his body riddled with cancer that had gone undiagnosed and untreated for months (The New York Times, August 12, 2008). More than 2,900 illegal labors were detained since October 2007, but only 75 employers or managers faced accusation. This number was just 2 percent of the labors (New York Times, July 1, 2008).
There is serious racial hostility in the United States. According to a Voice of America report, a research report released by the U.S. Department of Justice at the end of 2005 shows that United States reports about 191,000 hate crime each year (Voice of America's Chinese website, November 7, 2008). A FBI report released on October 27, 2008 indicated that 7,624 hate crime incidents were reported in the United States in 2007. Among them, 50.8 percent were motivated by a racial bias, 62.9 percent of the known offenders were white (FBI Releases 2007 Hate Crime Statistics, http://www.fbi.gov/hc2007/summary.htm). The Chicago Tribune reported on November 23, 2008 that there were 602 organization based on racial bias in the United States in 2000. The number surged to 888 by 2008. On the same day, the Boston Globe reported a survey by a professor from the Northwestern University, saying that the ratio of black men being murdered soared by 33 percent from 2002 to 2007.