A woman jumped to the defense of two Spanish-speaking women who were allegedly harassed for not speaking English in a Colorado grocery store this week.
Kamira Trent said she confronted Linda Dwire after the latter was apparently yelling at two women at a store in Rifle, Colorado.
A widely circulated video showed Trent and Dwire engaged in a shouting match as they walked down an aisle.
"I'm calling the cops. You leave these women alone! Get out!" Trent said.
"You come from a generation that's destroying this country," Dwire said.
"No, I do not. I have respect. You do not harass people," Trent replied.
Dwire responded by saying, "You will lose your country. You know what, you will lose this country."
Trent then said, "You do not harass Hispanic women!"
Dwire was ultimately arrested and slapped with two bias-motivated harassment charges, according to The Washington Post.
In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Mexico natives Fabiola Velasquez and Isabel Marin were speaking Spanish to each other when Dwire confronted them and said since they were in the United States, they should speak English.
Dwire told BuzzFeed her problem with the women was not rooted in race, but rather patriotism.
"It has nothing to do with race. It's a patriotic thing. When people come to my country, they need to love it enough to speak English," Dwire said.
"They'd rather have their country here. I don't mind them coming here as long as they want to be an American and not go on our welfare system. When there are so many people that they don't learn English, that's what divides our country."
Pew Research Center reported last year that more than 37 million Latinos living in the U.S. — 73 percent of Latinos — speak Spanish at home, up from 31 million in 2006. That makes Spanish the most spoken non-English language in the U.S.
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