Lower Hate Crime Numbers Mask a Dangerous Reality for Millions of Americans

A Decline on Paper, Not in Practice

The FBI released its 2025 annual hate crime statistics on August 14, 2026. Despite chronic underreporting, the annual release — based on data from law enforcement agencies across the nation — remains the best available measure of the state of hate crime in the United States. It shows that 10,881 hate crime incidents were reported in 2025, marking the lowest level of reported hate crime in five years. That sounds like progress. Civil rights advocates say it isn't.

In response to the data release, AAI Executive Director Maya Berry warned: "While the overall number of reported hate crimes declined in 2025, this data should not be mistaken for a decline in hate across our communities." Her organization, the Arab American Institute, has tracked hate crime trends for years and argues the headline number obscures a far more troubling picture beneath the surface.

Anti-Latino Hate Hits an All-Time High

The increase in anti-Latino hate crimes is particularly alarming, reaching the highest level ever recorded as the Trump Administration targets immigrant and Latino communities with bigoted rhetoric and policy. This is not a minor statistical blip — it reflects a community under sustained, escalating pressure.

Anti-Latino hate remains persistently high and was the highest number recorded in over a decade in 2025, a 19% increase to 952 single-bias incidents from 797 in 2024. To put that in context: nearly one thousand hate crimes were directed at Latino individuals in a single year — and experts widely agree that the real number is far higher, since most hate crimes are never reported to police at all.

The FBI's 2025 data also documents 120 anti-Arab hate crime incidents, with the FBI's continually updated Crime Data Explorer figure standing at 130 for 2025. While that figure shows some movement from recent years, the AAI stresses that these numbers reflect only what gets formally reported — a fraction of actual incidents.

Why the Numbers Always Fall Short

Hate crimes remain widely underreported due to fear of retaliation, language and cultural barriers, distrust of law enforcement, and inconsistent responses or inaccurate reporting by state and local law enforcement agencies, which undermines a comprehensive national understanding of hate-motivated violence. That last point matters enormously: the quality of this data depends entirely on whether local police departments choose to participate and report accurately.

Recent federal, state, and local actions — including aggressive immigration enforcement operations, restrictions on free speech, defunding of community-based grants, and the normalization of hate-based rhetoric and policies — have significantly eroded trust and confidence in law enforcement and government institutions, suppressing reporting and obscuring the true scope of harm. In other words, the very climate that may be driving more hate is simultaneously making it harder to count.

A Warning Across Communities

The same pattern of defamation extends to Black Americans, Arab Americans, American Muslims, and the LGBTQ+ community — a warning of what happens when government officials normalize hateful rhetoric. The AAI's statement frames this not as a series of isolated incidents, but as a systemic failure with a clear cause.

The 10,881 incidents reported in 2025 mark the lowest level in five years, and compared to last year's FBI release of 2024 data — which showed 11,679 incidents — that represents a 7% decrease. But as the AAI and other civil rights organizations make clear, a lower reported number is not the same as a safer country. Until the structural barriers to reporting are addressed, and until political rhetoric stops fueling bias-motivated violence, the gap between what gets counted and what actually happens will remain vast — and consequential.