Governor urged Texans to ‘take matters into own hands’ on immigrants, day before El Paso massacre

Greg Abbott, the Republican governor, echoed the xenophobic rhetoric of US President Donald Trump in the fundraising letter he sent on August 2

His remarks also mirrored the racist ‘manifesto’ of the shooter, who killed 22 people at a Walmart near the US-Mexico border the day afterwards

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Protesters embrace while holding placards against the visit of US President Donald Trump after the shooting at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas. Photo: Reuters

Published: 9:24am, 23 Aug 2019Updated: 10:01am, 23 Aug 2019

The day before a gunman in El Paso carried out the deadliest attack against Latinos in modern US history, the Texas governor sent out an anti-immigrant fundraising letter calling on Republicans to “DEFEND TEXAS NOW” and “take matters into our own hands”, according to news reports.

The letter send on August 2 from the governor, Greg Abbott, lamented that in “just three weeks in June, 45,000 illegal immigrants were apprehended crossing the Mexican border into Texas!” It continued: “That amounts to the entire population of Galveston – every three weeks. In just six months, we’d add the population of Arlington!”

Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas. Photo: AP

“If we’re going to DEFEND Texas, we’ll need to take matters into our own hands,” Abbott wrote, as reported by the Texas Signal website.

The fundraising appeal echoed the xenophobic rhetoric of Donald Trump, who has spoken of an “invasion” of migrants into the US. It also echoed the language in the racist “manifesto” allegedly written by the 21-year-old suspect before he killed 22 people at a Walmart near the US-Mexico border. The suspect, who travelled from a Dallas suburb 965 kilometres away, said the mass shooting was a “response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas” in his hate-filled document.

In the weeks since the massacre, law enforcement officials across the country say they have thwarted similar white supremacist attacks and mass shootings from potential gunmen who espoused far-right and racist viewpoints. In El Paso, which is 80 per cent Latino, residents have said that Trump’s escalating attacks on immigrants and racist campaign speeches have created a climate that encourages this kind of violence.