Southern Poverty Law Center Added Immigration Group to ‘Hate Map’ After It Reported SPLC ‘Charity’s’ Attacks on Trump to IRS

by Tyler O’Neil   A recent interview with the leader of an immigration reform organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has branded a “hate group” potentially shines new light on how the SPLC allegedly uses its “hate” accusations as a tactical political weapon. Throughout the 2016 presidential election, the Southern Poverty Law Center, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit entity, condemned candidate Donald Trump for his supposed ties to “far-right extremists.” The following year, an immigration group helped report this to the IRS, claiming the SPLC had violated its tax-exempt status by engaging in political activity against Trump, and the SPLC appears to have responded by adding that group to its “hate map” in what the immigration group calls an act of retaliation. “It was direct retaliation,” Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR, and chairman of the board of directors of its affiliated legal organization, the Immigration Reform Law Institute, told The Daily Signal in an interview this week. In November 2016, the Immigration Reform Law Institute announced that it would represent FAIR in an official complaint to the IRS that claimed the SPLC had violated its tax-exempt status. FAIR, founded in 1979 by self-declared liberals, conservatives, and moderates as…

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