One-man crime wave invades El Paso

That young man who massacred 22 shoppers at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, Aug. 3 reportedly posted comments online that he was angry about the “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” He must have slept through history class, when kids learn that Texas was part of northern Mexico until 1848, when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War.

The shooter was the invader. He traveled to a largely Latino border city with one of the lowest murder rates in the country, lower than Portland or Seattle. He created a one-man crime wave in a place where residents live in relative peace with each other.

I don’t know El Paso, but I am familiar with Nogales, Arizona, a much smaller border town where I lived for three years. When I arrived in November 2007, the sheriff told me there hadn’t been a murder in Santa Cruz County for years. More recent reports cite one murder in 2011 and one in 2018.

Border cities are bi-national communities where thousands of Americans and Mexicans cross the border daily for business, shopping, or visiting family. By and large, U.S. citizens of those cities do not view Mexico as a threat, but as a neighbor and a vital partner in commerce.

President Trump tries to paint Mexico as a source of dangerous criminals just waiting to sneak across the border to sell drugs and commit crimes of violence. Yes, people try to smuggle drugs from Mexico into the U.S., where most of their customers live, and that is why we have well-trained customs agents to intercept those shipments.

Trump touts walls and fences as the solution to protect U.S. border towns and the interior. But those fences lining our southern border could not protect those Americans and Mexicans who went to shop at Walmart that morning because the danger came from the north. A U.S. citizen brought his weapon, ammo and mind full of hate to El Paso and shattered the lives of dozens of people he had never met.