CLINTON, Wis. — The largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group in the country is calling on police to investigate allegedly racist attacks against a Mexican restaurant in Clinton in Rock County, Wisconsin.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, said in a statement the restaurant's owners have been the victims of threatening phone calls to close and to "go back to their country." The group is urging police to investigate the incident for possible hate crimes.
“These incidents of alleged racist harassment should be thoroughly investigated as possible hate crimes by law enforcement authorities and the perpetrators must be held accountable,” said CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper in the statement. “We stand in solidarity with the reported victims of this harassment and all those targeted by racism and bigotry.”
TMJ4 News partner Channel 3000 reports the restaurant is called La Guacamaya. The owners opened six months ago, and while initially they were excited about the opportunity, for the last three months they have been afraid.
Ginna Isunza, the director of the YWCA’s Immigrant Outreach Program, told Channel 3000 that the owners filed a police report "because of the calls that they were receiving with all those threats and people just calling in and saying ‘leave town, close the restaurant, go back to your country,’ was one of the messages. So they did report that to police."
“They did write some very bad messages on some of the dollar bills when they were making the payments," added Isunza.
The owners also heard that a group of people was trying to get signatures to close the restaurant. But the city told the owners that closure is unlikely because there are no legitimate complaints.
