US Congresswoman says Trump 'not welcome' in El Paso after mass shooting
US Congresswoman Veronica Escobar, who represents El Paso, Texas, the site of a recent mass shooting that left at least 20 people dead, said that President Donald Trump was "not welcome" in her city if he came to visit because of his provocative rhetoric about Hispanics and immigrants.
"Words have consequences. The president has made my community and my people the enemy," Escobar said Monday during an interview with MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
"He has told the country that we are people to be feared, people to be hated," she added.
El Paso police said the 21-year-old suspect published a "manifesto" before his shooting that had anti-immigrant and racist rhetoric. Saturday’s massacre was one of three mass shootings in the United States within a span of a week, unleashing fresh alarm at the national crisis of gun violence.
On Sunday, a 24-year-old gunman killed nine people in a rampage in Dayton, Ohio. That shooting came seven days after a teenager killed three people with an assault rifle at a food festival in California before taking his own life.
Trump is expected to visit the sites of the shootings later this week.
"I hope that [Trump] has the self-awareness to understand that we are in pain, and we are mourning, and we are doing the very best in our typical, graceful, El Paso way to be resilient," Escobar said.
"And so I would ask his staff and his team to consider the fact that his words and his actions have played a role in this," she added.
The lawmaker said that Hispanic people "have been dehumanized by the president and his enablers" and that this was "one of the lowest points in American history."
Violence committed by white men inspired by an extremist ideology makes up a growing number of domestic terrorism cases, according to a recent report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
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