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News — Aug. 3, 2024 marks the fifth anniversary of the El Paso massacre, one of the deadliest anti-Latino attacks in recent U.S. history. In 2019, a far-right extremist committed a deadly mass shooting at a Walmart in El, Paso Texas, a city on the border of the United States and Mexico. 23 people were killed in the attack.

is chair of the department of Latina/Latino studies and a professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. In his 2023 book, “” Rosas situates this devastating shooting as the latest unsettling consequence of our border crisis and currents of deeply rooted white nationalism embedded in the United States. Tracing strict immigration policies and inhumane border treatment from the Clinton era through Democratic and Republican administrations alike, Rosas shows how the rhetoric around these policies helped lead to the Trump administration's brutal crackdown on migration—and the massacre in El Paso. Professor Rosas is also active in Immigrant Rights movements both locally and nationally and has given expert testimony on behalf of people in asylum and related legal proceedings.

Quotes

“The legacy of the shooting is quite telling. It is one in a series of mass shootings that has rocked the United States in recent years. And it was one of a few across the globe that draw on Great Replacement theory, a paranoid vision that immigrants and other border crossers are invading countries and ultimately displacing white or related ethnonationalist groups. Indeed, a related mass shooting occurred in Buffalo only a few days after the El Paso massacre. Meanwhile border policy has stayed in the news and its coverage has intensified given the presidential election, including Trump’s promise for draconian deportations and the related news that Biden’s deportation policies have caused a surge in deportations as well.” Gilberto Rosas, chair of the department of Latina/Latino studies and professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

“Given the toxic brew of promised mass deportations and white nationalist charged rhetoric, El Paso and other border communities would likely face another surge of anti-migrant enforcement measures if Trump is elected for a second term. I’d also expect more children to be separated from their families and other caregivers. And I would expect serious pushback from committed border community members and their allies to challenge such draconian measures.”--Gilberto Rosas, chair of the department of Latina/Latino studies and professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign