Shot at the Counter: Are Indians and Asians Becoming Less Safe in Trump’s America?

Suresh Patel had owned the liquor store for four days.

At about 9 pm on August 20, a masked man entered Ridgecrest Cellars Wine and Spirits in Jackson, Tennessee. He wore a grey hoodie, jeans, black work boots and what police described as a paintball-style mask. He displayed a gun and demanded money.

The employees handed it over. The robber took the cash. Then he fired several shots. Patel collapsed inside the store and died there. His 19-year-old daughter was reportedly standing beside him when the gunfire erupted. She escaped unharmed. A 70-year-old employee fell during the attack and fractured her wrist. The gunman fled in a white sedan. Police have warned that he should be considered armed and dangerous.

Patel had emigrated from Gujarat and spent nearly three decades in the United States. He had lived in Chicago before moving into his new business in Jackson. His death travelled quickly back to Aakhaj, his ancestral village in Gujarat’s Mehsana district. Initial reports described Patel as 62. The Jackson Police Department identified him as 56. It also classified the attack as an armed robbery and fatal shooting. Investigators have released no evidence that Patel was targeted because he was Indian, Asian or an immigrant. WBBJ-TV

That distinction should not be blurred. Yet Patel’s murder opens a larger and more complicated American story. Indian and Asian communities confront two kinds of danger. One follows them through their faces, accents, turbans, names and perceived foreignness. The other waits behind the counters of the convenience stores, petrol stations and liquor shops through which generations of immigrants have built businesses and supported families. The first is hate. The second is exposure. Sometimes they collide.

WAS SURESH PATEL’S MURDER A HATE CRIME?

There is no evidence yet to call it one.

A hate crime is not defined by the victim’s identity alone. Investigators must find evidence that an offender was motivated, at least partly, by bias against the victim’s race, ethnicity, ancestry, religion or another protected characteristic.

Patel was Indian. That does not automatically make his murder anti-Indian. The facts released by police currently indicate that the assailant entered the store, demanded money, took the cash and opened fire. No racial slur, anti-immigrant statement or other evidence of bias has been publicly reported.

Patel’s death should therefore be described as a killing during an armed robbery unless the investigation establishes another motive. But that does not make his identity irrelevant. Patel belonged to a demographic group that is disproportionately exposed to fatal workplace violence: foreign-born men working in late-night retail businesses. To understand his death, America’s hate-crime statistics tell only half the story.

HAS VIOLENCE AGAINST ASIANS INCREASED?

Anti-Asian hate crime rose dramatically during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The FBI recorded 161 anti-Asian hate-crime incidents in 2019. The number climbed to 279 in 2020, an increase of about 77 per cent, even though fewer law-enforcement agencies participated in the reporting system that year.

Then came 2021. The FBI’s revised figures recorded 746 anti-Asian incidents, the highest annual total since the federal government began collecting hate-crime data. It was reportedly more than four times the pre-pandemic figure.

The violence was accompanied by abuse in streets, shops, schools, workplaces and public transport. Elderly Asians were pushed, punched and kicked. Asian women reported being spat upon and threatened. People who had never visited China were blamed for a virus that had travelled around the world. For an attacker looking for a target, nationality frequently did not matter. Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Japanese, Vietnamese and other Asian Americans could all be collapsed into the same racial category.

Indian and South Asian communities occupied a more complicated position. They were not always the primary targets of Covid-specific hostility, but they remained exposed to racism, religious hatred and anti-immigrant abuse. The pandemic wave has since receded. It has not vanished. The FBI recorded 379 anti-Asian hate-crime incidents in 2024. That was well below the 2021 peak but still more than twice the 161 incidents recorded in 2019.

The pattern is, therefore, neither a continuous rise nor a return to normal. Anti-Asian hate exploded during Covid, declined from its peak and settled at a level that remained elevated compared with the immediate pre-pandemic period.

DID ANTI-ASIAN HATE BEGIN WITH DONALD TRUMP?

No. It runs far deeper in American history.

Chinese labourers helped build America’s railways and were later driven from towns, attacked and excluded through federal law. Japanese Americans were incarcerated during the Second World War. Asians have repeatedly been depicted as economic threats, spies, disease carriers or foreigners incapable of fully becoming American.

South Asians have their own history of exclusion and violence. The identity assigned by an attacker has not always matched the identity of the victim. After the September 11 attacks, Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh petrol-station owner in Arizona, was shot dead by a man seeking revenge against people he associated with the attacks. Sodhi wore a turban and beard. His killer mistook him for an Arab Muslim. A few weeks later, Vasudev Patel, a Hindu Indian immigrant, was murdered at a petrol station in Texas by a gunman who had embarked on a post-9/11 shooting spree against people he considered Middle Eastern. The hatred preceded Trump. Political crises supplied it with new language and fresh targets.

DID IT INCREASE DURING TRUMP’S FIRST PRESIDENCY?

The data show a broader rise in reported hate crime during the early Trump years, followed by an extraordinary anti-Asian surge once Covid arrived.

The FBI recorded 6,121 hate-crime incidents in 2016. In 2017, Trump’s first year as president, the total climbed 17 per cent to 7,175. Anti-Black and anti-Jewish incidents accounted for large parts of the increase, but the figures reflected a wider deterioration in America’s racial climate.

Covid changed the scale of anti-Asian hostility. Trump repeatedly called the coronavirus the “Chinese virus” and used other language linking the disease to China. He defended the terminology as geographically descriptive. Asian American groups argued that it turned people who looked East Asian into visible stand-ins for a global pandemic.

Researchers subsequently tested whether the language merely reflected public anger or helped intensify it. A peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of Urban Economics found that reported anti-Asian incidents spiked after Trump’s initial “Chinese virus” posts. The increase was significantly more pronounced in counties that had supported Trump in the 2016 election than in counties that had backed Hillary Clinton.

Another study, published in Social Science Quarterly, analysed geolocated Covid-related posts and found that presidential scapegoating rhetoric significantly increased anti-Asian hostility online. High infection rates and anger over lockdown measures also played a role, but the researchers concluded that a public crisis alone did not fully explain the othering.

This does not prove that Trump caused every attack or that every supporter absorbed his rhetoric in the same way. It does establish a measurable relationship between language from the country’s most powerful political office and the spread of anti-Asian hostility. Trump did not create the prejudice. His rhetoric gave part of it permission to speak louder.

HAS VIOLENCE RISEN AGAIN DURING TRUMP’S SECOND TERM?

The available national crime data do not support such a sweeping conclusion.

Trump returned to the White House in January 2025. During that year, reported violent crime in the United States fell sharply. The FBI’s latest statistics show that murder declined by an estimated 18.1 per cent, robbery by 18.5 per cent and aggravated assault by 7.2 per cent. Reported hate-crime incidents also declined. Using comparable agencies that submitted data in both years, the FBI reportedly found a 7 per cent fall from 11,404 incidents in 2024 to 10,606 in 2025. Those figures make it misleading to say that physical violence or hate crime across America has simply risen under Trump’s second presidency.

But the aggregate decline conceals an emerging shift within anti-Asian hostility. South Asians have become increasingly prominent targets online. Stop AAPI Hate commissioned an analysis of domestic violent-extremist spaces across platforms including 4chan, Gab and X. It found that South Asians received 60 per cent of the anti-Asian slurs recorded between January 2023 and August 2024. The volume of anti-South Asian slurs doubled from approximately 23,000 in January 2023 to more than 46,000 in August 2024. Of the 973 online threats of anti-Asian violence recorded during that month, 75 per cent targeted South Asians.

The hostility surged as politicians of South Asian origin became unusually visible across America’s ideological spectrum. Kamala Harris emerged as the Democratic presidential nominee. Usha Vance appeared at the Republican National Convention. Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy had already sought the Republican nomination.

Visibility did not dissolve the “forever foreigner” stereotype. In some corners of the internet, it fed it. Yet even here, the data resist a simple story of endless escalation. A March 2026 AP-NORC and AAPI Data poll found that approximately one-quarter of Asian American and Pacific Islander adults had experienced a hate incident during the preceding year. That was down from 36 per cent in October 2023. Anti-Asian hostility has become less concentrated around Covid and more entangled with immigration, economic anxiety and political representation. South Asians are increasingly visible within that new battlefield.

HOW MANY INDIANS HAVE BEEN TARGETED?

America does not know. The FBI records anti-Asian hate crime as a broad category. It does not publish a clean national count of crimes directed specifically at Indian Americans. An Indian-origin victim may appear under anti-Asian bias. A Sikh victim may be classified under anti-Sikh religious bias. Other cases may be recorded as anti-Hindu, anti-Muslim or anti-Arab, depending on what the offender said, believed or appeared to believe.

Some attacks straddle several identities. A Sikh man of Indian origin might be targeted for wearing a turban by an attacker who mistakes him for a Muslim from the Middle East. The offence may be anti-Sikh, anti-Muslim, anti-Asian, anti-Arab or a combination of biases. The official category depends on what investigators can prove.

The religious data provide one window. The FBI recorded 142 anti-Sikh incidents and 25 anti-Hindu incidents in 2024. The anti-Sikh number had fallen from 198 in 2022 and 150 in 2023, but Sikhs remained the third-most-targeted religious group after Jews and Muslims. Even those numbers almost certainly understate the problem. Participation in the FBI system has improved, but local agencies are not legally required to submit hate-crime data. Victims may also avoid the police, fail to recognise an incident as a hate crime or believe that reporting it will accomplish little. The result is a statistical blind spot around one of America’s largest and fastest-growing immigrant communities.

WHAT DO INDIAN AMERICANS SAY THEY EXPERIENCE?

Half of Indian adults surveyed by Pew Research Center said they had experienced racial discrimination or unfair treatment because of their race or ethnicity.

Twenty-six per cent said strangers had called them offensive names. Approximately one-third said somebody had told them to return to their “home country.” Yet only 44 per cent of Indian respondents described discrimination against Asians as a major American problem. That was lower than the corresponding shares among Filipino, Chinese and Korean adults. The contrast raises difficult questions. Some Indian Americans may not place themselves within a broader Asian racial identity. First-generation immigrants may compare their American experience with conditions in the country they left. Economic and professional success may soften the perception of structural discrimination. Others may simply have learnt to absorb insults without naming them. The discrimination, however, remains visible in the answers. A passport may say American. A stranger can still demand to know where someone is “really” from.

WHY ARE IMMIGRANT SHOPKEEPERS SO EXPOSED?

Because late-night retail work brings together cash, isolation and predictability. Convenience stores, petrol stations and liquor shops frequently remain open when surrounding businesses have closed. Workers handle money, stand in fixed positions and may work alone or with only one other person. Alcohol sales can increase volatility. An offender can watch the store, study its routines and choose the moment of entry.

The US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health found that robbery-related homicide and assault were the leading causes of death in retail businesses. In 2019, convenience-store workers suffered work-related violent deaths at 14 times the rate recorded across private industry: 6.8 homicides per 100,000 workers compared with 0.48. The risk was not evenly distributed. Asian, Black and Hispanic men suffered disproportionately higher homicide rates than White men. Foreign-born men reportedly faced higher rates than men born in the United States. Workers aged 65 and above faced the highest rate among age groupsCDC-NIOSH

Patel stood at the intersection of several of those risks. He was a foreign-born Asian man working at night inside a business that handled cash and sold alcohol. He had acquired the store only days earlier and may still have been learning its rhythms, security arrangements and vulnerabilities. His daughter was beside him. The robber had already received the money. He fired anyway.

WHY DO SO MANY INDIAN IMMIGRANTS ENTER THESE BUSINESSES?

For many immigrant families, small retail offered an accessible route into American ownership.

A shop could be bought, leased or run through family labour. Relatives worked shifts, pooled savings and learnt the business together. Limited fluency in English or the non-recognition of foreign qualifications mattered less behind one’s own counter than in a corporate recruitment process. The hours were punishing, but the shop could educate children, finance a house and bring extended family into the economic climb. That model helped build thousands of immigrant success stories. It also placed owners and relatives on the frontline of American street crime. The counter became a route into the middle class and a fixed point of exposure.

DOES RACE PLAY NO ROLE IN AN ORDINARY ROBBERY?

That conclusion would also go too far. A robbery can be economically motivated without being racially neutral in its selection of place or victim. An offender may choose a business because it is open late, handles cash and appears lightly staffed. Those conditions may exist partly because an immigrant family supplies its own labour and accepts hours that larger businesses cover through security systems and multiple employees.

Race may not be the motive for pulling the trigger. Immigration, occupation and economic structure can still shape who stands in front of the gun. In other cases, racial hatred and commercial vulnerability merge. Petrol stations and convenience stores have repeatedly become the settings for post-9/11 attacks on Sikhs, Muslims and South Asians. The attacker enters a space where the intended racial target is visible, stationary and accessible. That is why hate crime and workplace violence should not be collapsed into one category. They should also not be studied in isolation from each other.

SO, ARE INDIANS AND ASIANS LESS SAFE IN TRUMP’S AMERICA?

The honest answer depends on which danger is being measured.

Overall violent crime fell during the first year of Trump’s second term. Reported hate crime fell too. Anti-Asian hate crime remains below its pandemic peak. But anti-Asian incidents are still elevated compared with 2019. South Asians have become disproportionately prominent targets in extremist online spaces. Anti-immigrant rhetoric keeps alive the idea that even a successful, naturalised or American-born Asian remains conditional: welcome while useful, foreign when convenient.

Trump’s first presidency did not invent that idea. Research indicates that his Covid rhetoric amplified it. Patel’s killing illuminates the second danger. Long before Trump entered politics, foreign-born men behind American retail counters were dying at far higher rates than the average worker. Their exposure arises from the structure of the job, the geography of opportunity and the way many immigrant families have pursued the American dream.

A masked gunman entered Patel’s new store four days after he had taken it over. His daughter watched him die in the business that was supposed to begin the family’s next chapter. Investigators may eventually determine why the robber continued shooting after taking the cash. They may never find a racial motive. The larger truth does not require inventing one. Sometimes an Indian in America is attacked because of who he is. Sometimes he is killed because of where the immigrant dream has placed him.

(With inputs from ANI)