August 3, 2019, in El Paso, Texas, was the day many Latinos feared would come after that moment four years ago when Donald Trump descended down that Trump Tower escalator and called Mexicans criminals and rapists. His presidential campaign sparked an escalation in hate crimes targeting immigrants and other marginalized communities, but Saturday’s mass violence, the Los Angeles Times reports, has “marked for many Latinos a devastating new low in the Trump era.”
In Pico Rivera, California, David Llamas said that, “I’m watching everyone from the corner of my eye. It’s come to this—you’ve got to watch where you shop.” Llamas talked to reporters outside a Walmart on his way to work selling Dodgers souvenirs. “Things have changed: We’ve got a president who is promoting racism,” he continued. This fear is being felt in other areas rocked by domestic terrorism and where Latinos have clearly been targeted.
“In Gilroy, Calif., the streets were quiet one week after another gunman shot and killed three people at the popular Gilroy Garlic Festival,” the LA Times continued, “shortly after posting online about ‘hordes of mestizos’ and encouraging people to read a book associated with white supremacists.” The gunman’s terror had its intended effect: to kill—three people, including six-year-old Stephen Romero—and to create fear. “Parks were empty, church parking lots were barren, and many businesses were deserted.”
In Florida, 73-year-old Bertha Rodriguez “had a hard time talking about the El Paso shooting without breaking into tears,”The New York Times reported. “I live in this terror for my grandkids,” she said. And 30-year-old Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipient, said “It’s really hard to be alive as an immigrant right now and to not be sick and exhausted. It feels like being hunted.” While she’s on her way to a green card through her marriage, she fears for her parents, who are undocumented.
Trump policies have certainly targeted immigrant communities, but the hate Trump has inspired didn’t differentiate based on immigration status.
Survivor Chris Grant said that the white supremacist terrorist “was targeting Mexicans and was passing whites, African Americans,” shooting people speaking Spanish. “Por favor, no. No, por favor,'" he said they pleaded. "They were on the ground and he still just shot them in the head. They were praying. 'Please, please, don't shoot me.' He had no remorse for their lives at all.”
No remorse, and why would he feel a shred of it when the president of the United States chuckled when a supporter called for asylum-seekers to be shot at the border? “The shooter didn’t stop to ask any of the 22 people he killed for their papers, or if they came to the U.S. ‘the right way,’ or if they immigrated ‘legally,’” writer and activist Julissa Arce said. “That’s because it isn’t actually about legality. It is about our brown skin in America.”