USA TODAY International Edition
El Paso signals open season on Hispanics
Trump presidency stained by his xenophobia, racism
A young man with a powerful rifle confirmed what many Hispanics have known for over two years now: It is open season on Latinos in the United States. The 21-year-old turned a Walmart in El Paso into a horrific scene of injury and death, with at least 22 people killed and 24 wounded. “This Anglo man came here to kill Hispanics,” El Paso County Sheriff Richard Wiles wrote on his personal Facebook page.
In a manifesto that local police attribute to the gunman, posted online minutes before the shootings, he warned of a “Hispanic invasion of Texas” and railed against immigrants.
This bigoted bile should be familiar to all Americans, as we have heard a steady stream of it since the day that Donald Trump announced his run for the presidency. Trump has rarely missed an opportunity to denigrate or demonize Latinos and immigrants, and now El Pasoans have paid the deadly price. The truth is that there is a clear link between the racist in chief and the loss of lives at the Cielo Vista Walmart.
Our president began his White House bid by calling Mexicans drug dealers and “rapists.” He has disparaged a Mexican-American judge because of his heritage and treated Hispanic journalists with disrespect. He has spoken of illegal immigration in terms of infestation and invasion. At a May rally, he laughed off a fan’s suggestion that violence was the way to deal with unauthorized migrants.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that one of Trump’s supporters decided to target El Paso, which is about 80% Latino. Due to the ongoing influx of Central American migrants, the city has also become a symbol of our dysfunctional immigration system. Trump likes to paint the borderlands as dangerous and out of control, yet it is he is who brought the area kids in cages, family separations, tent cities — and one of the deadliest gun rampages in modern U.S. history.
It is no secret that white nationalists have been emboldened under Trump. His defense of “very fine people” on both sides of the 2017 neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, is just one example. Now, once again, we see the consequences of bigotry coming from the White House, as Trump supporters act out their hatred.
Trump has utterly failed in a president’s traditional role of uniting the country. His tenure has been one long attack on Muslims, immigrants, women of color and Latinos, as he repeatedly stokes racial fears and division.
For much of the weekend of the El Paso and Dayton shootings, Trump was at his golf course in New Jersey and said little. He did eventually said Americans must condemn and defeat the “sinister ideologies” of “racism, bigotry and white supremacy.” But his failure to speak forcefully about El Paso right after the massacre, and to apologize for his own rhetoric, speaks volumes.
Trump is certainly capable of speaking up when something matters to him. When an undocumented immigrant was charged with killing Kate Steinle in San Francisco in 2015, Trump helped turn the event into national news by demanding justice for Steinle and punishment for her alleged killer (he was found not guilty of murder in 2017). Trump repeatedly used this episode to make the case that undocumented immigrants are a threat to the country.
After the El Paso shootings, will Trump denounce young white nationalists with as much fervor and persistence? Doubtful. That’s because Latinos don’t matter to this president. Just ask the people of Puerto Rico.
Obviously, the president did not personally unload a rifle in El Paso. But the words he uses matter. An October Pew poll found that Hispanics have become more pessimistic about our place in America: 54% said it has become more difficult to live in the U.S. as a Latino in the past few years. Now, after the El Paso trauma, Latinos have even more reason to feel that living in the Trump era amounts to living under a state of siege.
El Paso will not be defined by this tragedy. The Sun City will grieve and rise again. By contrast, Trump’s presidency will forever be stained by his deadly xenophobia and racism.