Steve Levy hoped to ride the anti-immigrant horse to Albany.
This is the first of a series we are offering looking at politicians who are inciting anti-immigrant prejudice.
Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy took office while the county was going through a crisis of hate crimes against immigrants. Local neo-Nazis had kidnapped two Mexican day laborers in Farmingville and tried to murder them. A group of five young men from the same town burned down the house of a Mexican family- with the family sleeping inside of it. It was only fast thinking by neighbors that saved the slumbering immigrants’ lives. Organized and powerful anti-immigrant groups campaigned against Latinos, describing them as “criminals” and “low-level terrorists.”
Levy saw this fire of hatred and decided to throw gasoline on it.
In his first year in office, the new County Executive stirred up a hornet’s nest by tying immigrants to criminality, in spite of the fact that Suffolk’s crime rate had declined steadily as its foreign-born population increased. He capped his freshman year by announcing a plan to make Suffolk Police into immigration enforcement agents, a proposal opposed by the police because it undercut their role of protecting the entire community.
Levy, who had a history of anti-immigrant stands during his years as a county legislator, attracted the attention of national nativist groups and began to appear on the Lou Dobbs show and Fox News. Levy worked closely with hate groups like the Minutemen, Federation for Immigration Reform, and Sachem Quality of Life. It was becoming clear that he was after higher office and that he saw far-right anger at Latinos as a path to greater power.
Levy conjured up a brew of hatred and violence in the county he leads.
Levy and his allies began to push bills in the county legislature targeting Latinos. Levy also stepped up his rhetoric, describing Latino children born in the United States as “Anchor Babies” and suggesting that the 14th Amendment should not protect them.
In 2006, he set off a panic in Southampton when he claimed that a local hospital was on the verge of closing its maternity ward because of the births of “anchor babies.” The hospital never had any such plans and the maternity ward remains open.
Marcelo Lucero, killed for being Latino in Suffolk.
Levy repeatedly decried evidence that his crusade against immigrants had badly divided the county and had increased the harassment of Latinos. He referred to local immigrant leaders as “the lunatic fringe”, “anarchists and communists”, and “illegal immigration advocates.”
These seven young Suffolk men were convicted in connection with the killing of Marcelo Lucero.
Following the 2008 murder of Marcelo Lucero in Patchogue by an anti-immigrant mob, Levy described the killing as a “one day story.” He later compared the hate killing to a colonoscopy. At a fundraising dinner the following summer he joked that he was about to have the Latino restaurant staff arrested by ICE and deported.
Under Steve Levy’s leadership, Suffolk County has become the hate crime capital of New York State. In a detailed report on the climate of fear Latinos live with in Suffolk, the respected Southern Poverty Law Center branded him the hate crime “Enabler in Chief”.
A United States Justice Department investigation is currently underway into the Levy administration’s handling of hate crimes against Latinos.
Thousands of Long Islanders held a vigil at the place where Marcelo Lucero was killed to call for an end to hate-mongering.
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