USA TODAY International Edition
Hispanics ‘dehumanized,’ lawmaker says
The death toll in a Walmart shooting rose to 22 as residents of El Paso, Texas, tried to settle into their new reality Monday and politicians debated whether President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric contributed to the massacre.
Officials updated totals to 22 killed and 24 injured. The devastating violence left the city reeling – El Paso had 23 homicides in all of last year.
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke unleashed a profanitylaced tirade Sunday when asked whether Trump could turn things around and help the situation in the border town O’Rourke calls home. Media outlets around the country, and around the world, accused Trump of inspiring a shooter who gunned down dozens of people. The result, according to another El Paso-based member of Congress, is a Hispanic population increasingly in the crosshairs.
“All of this has happened because Hispanic people have been dehumanized. They have been dehumanized by the president, by his enablers, by other politicians,” Rep. Veronica Escobar, DTexas, said early Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “This is one of the lowest points in American history, and if we don’t recognize this as such, we will not have the turning point that we so desperately need as a country.”
Trump, who spoke little Sunday about the mass shootings that terrorized the nation over the weekend, delivered a speech from the White House on Monday in which he bashed the “twisted monster” who committed the El Paso shooting.
The president said Patrick Crusius wrote a 2,356-word “manifesto” that was posted online shortly before the shooting and was filled with “racist hate.” Crusius, who is white, laced his manifesto with anti-immigrant and racist rhetoric, saying he advocates a plan to divide the nation into territories by race.
“In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy,” Trump said. “These sinister ideologies must be defeated.”
In El Paso, investigators gathered evidence in the capital murder case against Crusius, 21, of Allen, Texas. He was booked into the El Paso County Jail early Sunday. He is accused of walking into the Walmart near a shopping mall Saturday morning and opening fire, setting off panic as hundreds of customers and employees fled.
Local officials identified Crusius as the author of the “manifesto” that bashed the influx of Hispanic immigrants into the USA, echoing some of the language Trump has used when describing Mexican and Central American migrants who have tried to enter the country illegally.
District Attorney Jaime Esparza said Sunday that he intends to seek the death penalty. U.S. Attorney John Bash said federal authorities were treating the shooting as a domestic terrorism case and “seriously considering” hate crime charges. Crusius graduated high school in 2016 and enrolled in Collin College in the fall of 2017, according to the school. He was enrolled until spring 2019.
His grandparents, Larry and Cynthia Brown, released a statement Sunday expressing their devastation. A family friend of the grandparents read the statement aloud, KDFW reported.
“We are devastated by the events of El Paso, and pray for the victims of this tragedy. Patrick Crusius is our grandson. He lived with us in our house in Allen, Texas, while he attended Collin College. He moved out of our house six weeks ago, and has spent a few nights here while we were out of town. His driver’s license and mailing address were at our house in Allen,” the statement reads.
The manifesto says Hispanics will overwhelm the state’s voting bloc of white people and could turn Texas, historically a Republican stronghold, toward the Democratic Party. The writer denies in the manifesto that he is a white supremacist but suggests “race mixing” is destroying the nation and recommends dividing the nation into race-based enclaves.
The manifesto claims the author’s views in support of a border wall predate Trump’s campaign and dismisses any attempt to blame the attack on the president as “fake news.”
“This is one of the lowest points in American history, and if we don’t recognize this as such, we will not have the turning point that we so desperately need.” Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas