Migrant Activist Gets Menacing Hate Letter : Border: Police are investigating the latest in a series of threats against Roberto Martinez, a Latino advocate.

San Diego police are investigating the origins of a threatening letter full of racial epithets received last week by Roberto Martinez, a leading Latino activist who has been an outspoken advocate for immigrants in the U.S.-Mexico border area.

“We’re investigating it as a hate crime,” police spokesman Bill Robinson said.

The crudely written letter is the latest in a series of threats Martinez has received by mail and telephone, he said. The letter was received Sept. 12 and has been turned over to police, he added.

The threats intensified earlier this year following the ongoing Light Up the Border protests in San Diego, Martinez said. During the protests, U.S. motorists shine their car headlights towards Mexico in a symbolic rebuff of illegal immigration.

Martinez and others have condemned the demonstrations, which call for more enforcement along the border, as racist and anti-immigrant and have staged counter-demonstrations.

Muriel Watson, founder of the Light Up the Border protests, denied any link between the movement and the letter, which she condemned unequivocally.

“This kind of thing is reprehensible and terribly counterproductive,” said Watson, who is the Republican candidate for the state Senate seat now held by Sen. Wadie Deddeh (D-Chula Vista).

Martinez, a 53-year-old San Diego native and father of five, has been active in immigrant issues in the area for more than a decade. A frequent figure at immigration-related protests, panels and news events, Martinez has often publicly denounced alleged abuses by U.S. immigration officers and area police agencies, including the San Diego Police Department.

The rambling, single-page missive, delivered by mail and signed only “The Holy Church Of The White Fighting Machine Of The Cross,” demanded in coarse and racial terms that Martinez cease his work on behalf of migrants and undocumented people. The document referred venomously both to Latinos and Jews in language reminiscent of the white supremacist movement.

“This illegal crossing has been going on too long, and white power is not going to let you have any political clout over it, so you better shut up, buddy, you are coming down to your time now,” stated the letter, typewritten in capital letters and directed specifically to Martinez. “Stop criticizing the Border Patrol and the whites who are trying to save our white country from the Jews and the goy (Yiddish for non-Jew) stooges in the government who will not act in behalf of the white Aryan race.”

Martinez said the letter reinforced his decision to relocate his office from a Golden Hill storefront to a more secure downtown location by next month.

However, Martinez said he has no intention of cutting back on his activities.

“I’m not going to work any differently, but I am going to take a few more precautions about where I go, what I do and that kind of thing,” said Martinez, who added that he would not hesitate to ask for police protection if he felt in danger of a physical attack.

The hate threats, in Martinez’s view, are part of the growing anti-immigrant sentiment that is increasingly evident in the San Diego area and Southern California, the preferred destination for many new immigrants from Latin America and elsewhere.

“There’s been a lot of negative sentiment directed at undocumented people, and I guess it was just a matter of time before they got to people like me,” Martinez said.

For the past seven years, Martinez has served as the border representative in San Diego for the American Friends Service Committee, the Philadelphia-based social action arm of the Quaker church. The Quaker group has chapters in more than two dozen nations and more than 40 U.S. communities.

“We call on people of good will in San Diego to join us in denouncing and combating racist intimidation and threats and in building a society that celebrates the inherent dignity of all people,” Tony Henry, executive secretary for the American Friends Service Committee’s regional office in Pasadena, said in a statement.