Governor criticized for "disgusting" anti-immigrant email sent day before El Paso attack | American News



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The day before an armed man in El Paso launched the deadliest attack in modern American history against the Latinos, the Texas governor sent an anti-immigrant fundraising letter calling on Republicans to "DEFEND THE TEXAS NOW "and to" take things in hand, "according to reports.

In a letter dated Aug. 2, Greg Abbott, Governor, lamented that "only three weeks in June, 45,000 illegal immigrants were apprehended crossing the Mexican border in Texas!", He added: "This represents the totality of the Galveston population – every three weeks … In only six months we would add the population of Arlington!

"If we want to defend Texas, we will have to take things in hand," Abbott wrote in the mailing, which was reported by the Texas Signal website. The Guardian saw a copy written but not the original document.

The appeal for fundraising echoed the xenophobic rhetoric of Donald Trump, who spoke of an "invasion" of migrants to the United States. It also echoes the language of the racist "manifesto" that would have been written by the 21-year-old suspect before he killed 22 people in a Walmart located near the US-Mexico border. The suspect, who left the suburbs of Dallas a hundred miles away, said the mass shots were "a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas" in his hate-filled document.

In the weeks following the massacre, law enforcement officials across the country stated that they had foiled attacks similar to white supremacist and mass shots. potential gunmen who had espoused far-right and racist views. In El Paso, which has 80% of Latino residents, residents said Trump's growing attacks on immigrants and racist campaign rhetoric had created a climate conducive to such violence.

Abbott and other Texas Texas executives also faced increased scrutiny of their anti-immigrant language as a result of the August 3 attack.

"Doing nothing would only cause disaster for Texas," said the governor's letter of fundraising, adding immigrants to the border: "How much are we not catching because of Washington, DC's inaction – and the refusal of members of both parties to work with President Trump to secure our border? "

"It's disgusting," said Thursday in an interview Manny Garcia, executive director of the Texas Democratic Party. "They know exactly what they do when they use this kind of language and use this racist rhetoric to give energy to their base. It's really disturbing. It's alarmist, it's threatening, it's hostile. "

David Stout, a commissioner from El Paso County who represents the district where the tragedy occurred, said that it was impossible to ignore the connection between the governor's language and the suspect involved in the shooting, which is currently under investigation as internal terrorism: "If the head The Texas government uses this type of words and talks about the defense of our country and the need to take things in hand, it seems to me to be a call to people to do exactly that.

"That's what this guy who came to Dallas from El Paso was trying to do. He was trying to defend what he thought he should defend and take things into his own hands, "continued Stout. "It's really very disturbing."

Immediately after the shooting, Abbott and other heads of state focused on mental health and other factors, thereby minimizing concerns about access to guns and xenophobic hate speech. Abbott had already tweeted that Texans should "speed up the pace" by buying guns and supported the Trump administration 's widely criticized efforts to deploy the National Guard at the border last year.

Abbott's office did not respond to repeated requests for comment on Thursday.

When Abbott was asked about the president's rhetoric at a recent public meeting, he repeated Trump's speech on the low unemployment rate of Black and Hispanic workers, according to the Texas Tribune. The governor has also set up a task force to study extremism and internal terrorist threats as a result of the shooting.

Studies have repeatedly refuted the main anti-immigrant claims of Trump, Abbott and others. Research has shown that immigrants do not take jobs from people born in the United States and El Paso has long been considered one of the safest cities in America. Every day, more than 23,000 people cross the border from its twin city of Mexico, Ciudad Juárez, to get to work.

"Mexico is part of the Texas structure. We should be proud of it, "said Garcia. "We are a state of immigrants."

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