This week marks the one-year anniversary that a white supremacist who in his racist scrawlings echoed the words of the president of the United States and drove 10 hours to El Paso, Texas to kill Mexicans. The hate crime stole the lives of 23 people and injured nearly two dozen more, including a 2-month-old infant, whose parents were killed protecting him from bullets.
It was deadliest attack on U.S. Latinos in our modern history, and the pain has not lessened for survivors and families. Neither has the scourge of white supremacy that inspired the hate crime, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said in a video released on Monday.
"This anniversary is a moment to resume the purpose we felt a year ago, to recommit to the battle for the soul of this nation, a battle against the forces of white supremacy, which this president has encouraged and emboldened,” Biden said in the video Monday. “You know, last year, in the days that followed the El Paso shooting, I said that we as Americans must do what our current president can’t: Stand together. Stand against hate. Stand up for what, at its best, this nation believes.”
How did the rhetoric of the president differ from the rhetoric of the white supremacist terrorist? It didn’t. A USA Today analysis in the weeks following the terror attack found that the impeached president spewed violent, anti-immigrant rhetoric more than 500 times since 2017, including using the word “invasion” at least 19 times. In his scrawlings, the white supremacist shooter complained about a “Hispanic invasion” of Texas.
Rep. Veronica Escobar, who assumed the role of comforter-in-chief in El Paso and has been a critic of the impeached president’s attacks on border communities, told The Guardian she feared it was a racist attack from the first moments she was aware of the shooting. “One of the things that stuck me that day was I kind of knew in my heart of hearts that it was a racially-motivated attack,” she told The Guardian. “When I heard about the mass attack … I kept holding on to hope that it was not what I feared.”
Other Latino leaders agreed with her from the start. “The attack two days ago was an attack of a Latino community, it was an attack on immigrants, it was an attack on Mexicans, and Mexican-Americans. And that was not an accident,” former San Antonio mayor and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro said at the time. “That is in part due to the climate this president has set.”
In message after message after the shooting, Latinos across the U.S. told journalist Adrian Carrasquillo that they were in a heightened state of fear following the white supremacist terror attack.
“A white man said his Latina wife from the Rio Grande Valley broke down after reading the shooter’s manifesto,” he wrote last year. “She told him she’s sorry if their future kids are targets because of her. There were people who said they wish they didn’t have an accent so they could pass as white, and others who said they are ashamed to be relieved they can pass as white. ‘We’re not fine,’ a resident of a border town wrote to me.”
CBS News reported at the time that “the whole room raised their hands when asked if they feel actual fear about what happened—and they all said they have never felt this way before.” Another Latina told Carrasquillo: “It is really the last few months that I feel not wanted by my fellow Americans and it hurts.”
The white supremacist’s racist belief was that this wasn’t their home. But this was their home. This is our home, and our fight to dismantle white supremacy goes hand-in-hand with our fight for justice for André Pablo Anchondo, Jordan Kae Anchondo, Arturo Benavides, Jorge Calvillo Garcia, Leonardo Campos Jr., Maribel Hernandez-Loya, Adolfo Cerros Hernández, Sara Esther Regalado Monreal, Guillermo "Coach Memo" Garcia, Angelina Silva Englisbee, Maria Muñoz Flores, Raul Estrada Flores, Gerhard Alexander Hoffmann, David Alvah Johnson, Luis Alfonso Juarez, Maria Eugenia Legarreta Rothe, Ivan Manzano, Gloria Irma Marquez, Elsa L. Mendoza, Margie Reckard, Javier Amir Rodriguez, Teresa Trinidad Sanchez Guerra, and Juan De Dios Velazquez.
“In the days that followed the El Paso shooting, I said Americans have to come together, stand against hate, and leave nobody behind,” Biden continued in a tweet. “That charge feels more important than ever. This is our fight—and together, we will win.”