Seven Long Island teenagers have been charged with hate crimes for the murder of an Ecuadorian immigrant earlier this month. The high school students were indicted today for an attack that ended with one of them stabbing Marcelo Lucero.

In a case that tops last summer’s murder of Mexican immigrant Luis Ramirez in Shenandoah, Pa., the young men were riding around the town of Patchogue looking for Latino men to attack. They called it “beaner-hopping.” Strangely, one of the teens was of Hispanic origin himself.

Long Island’s local paper, Newsday, has followed this story all the way to Ecuador, where a reporter interviewed his grieving family. Lucero, who had lived in the United States for 15 years, had been planning to return to Ecuador soon.

Steve Levy, the Suffolk County executive, has spoken out against illegal immigration, and relations between locals and immigrants have been tense. In an effort to prevent future hate crimes against immigrants, Levy said he was hiring a Hispanic liaison to the police and, according to Newsday, “broadening the county’s ‘Hate’s Not Cool’ program.”

Meanwhile, the AP quotes Ecuadorean Ambassador Luis Gallegos:

“It is tragic that a crime of this nature, a xenophobic lynching, happened just as the United States celebrates a historic step forward in which racial barriers have been overcome.”