A White Nationalist Conspiracy Inspired A Murderous Domestic Terrorist Attack: Six Years Later, It Has Poisoned Our Federal Government
Six years later, the rhetoric that inspired a deadly terror attack in El Paso hasn’t gone away. Instead, it’s been mainstreamed by Republicans.
For El Pasoans, this past August 3rd was a tragic day of remembrance. On that day in 2019, their community was terrorized by a man who was motivated by white nationalist and antisemitic conspiracy theories, leading to the murders of 23 people and injury of 22 others who were simply going about their day and doing some shopping at their local Walmart.
Luis Alfonso Juarez, the eldest victim at 90, had lived the American Dream, his family said. “Juarez’s family said he emigrated from Mexico and eventually became an American citizen. Juarez, who had a long career as an iron worker, bought a home, and he and his wife raised seven children,” the AP reported in 2019. At the time of his death, he’d been married to his wife, Martha, for 70 years.
Javier Rodriguez, was the youngest victim at just 15. He was remembered by his friends as big-hearted and a gifted soccer player. “He’s just everything you look for in a student,” his coach said. In 2022, at what should have been his high school graduation, his family was presented with his diploma. "I really appreciate everybody in the community and the district that’s doing everything so that my son's legend keeps going and they keep remembering him," said his dad, Fransisco Rodriguez.
Juarez, Rodriguez, and the 21 other beloved community members who lost their lives in this senseless tragedy were remembered during a ceremony held by the City of El Paso and the Border Network for Human Rights on Sunday.
“BNHR built 23 crosses, each with a name of a victim. The crosses were set up in front of the memorial which consists of seven granite pillars that also have the victims’ names engraved on them,” KTSM reported. “Each of the victims’ names was read aloud and followed by a ceremonial bell toll. There was a moment of silence held shortly after 10 a.m., when speakers said the first 911 call came in on Aug. 3, 2019.” At the end of the ceremony, white doves were released in loving memory of these treasured family members.
“As we remember those we lost in the El Paso mass shooting,” said Rep. Joaquin Castro (TX-20), “we must condemn racist rhetoric that tears apart our communities and makes us less safe, and stop dangerous people from getting dangerous weapons so easily.”
It’s important to note that this dangerous rhetoric was not created by this hideous killer. “He believed in a conspiracy about a ‘Hispanic invasion’, a lie he didn’t invent, but one pushed by elected officials, far-right media, and even a president who spoke of immigrants as ‘poison’ and an ‘infestation,’” said Mario Carrillo, Texas-based Campaigns Director for America’s Voice. Once a conspiracy theory relegated to the fringes, it was echoed, shouted, and advertised in a $900 million dollar campaign from the right in order to normalize the fiction that an “invasion” of immigrants was real.
And it’s a lie found straight at the top. As the domestic terrorist from El Paso was getting sentenced to 23 life terms, his defense attorney stated that he acted because he believed that “he had to stop the invasion because that’s what his president was telling him … He thought, if he doesn’t do it, then nobody’s going to do it. He’s got to start.” Following the shooting, one report revealed that Donald Trump had used words like “invasion” to discuss our immigrant neighbors hundreds of times. Trump, infamously, had run over 2,000 Facebook ads pushing the invasion conspiracy in the months leading up to the attack.
But despite the death count, the rhetoric has not stopped. In fact, many Republicans have embraced the white nationalist conspiracy as their own and advanced it as a core part of their messaging. America’s Voice was closely monitoring the issue and found the problem becoming acutely worse. In 2024 alone, we tracked 165 members of this Congress who amplified the replacement conspiracy theory and invasion rhetoric. In the first seven months of that year, they pushed this conspiracy over 650 times in their official capacity on their social media accounts.
Additionally, we tracked 11 pieces of federal legislation employing the invasion conspiracy at that time, including over 130 examples of Republican members of Congress using the invasion conspiracy on the House or Senate floor.
Just one month before the fifth anniversary of El Paso that same year, Republicans released a full 20 point policy platform ahead of their 2024 Republican National Convention, with the number one priority invoking the bigoted “seal the border, and stop the migrant invasion” conspiracy, and number two, carrying out “the largest deportation operation in American history.” Both items ranked ahead of fiscal policies or energy.
They put this abhorrent agenda on full display at their national convention, where speakers on the main stage across all nights amplified the replacement theory. One of the most explicit abusers of this bigoted lie was none other than Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. “We are facing an invasion on our southern border,” Cruz claimed. “Not figuratively. A literal invasion … every day, Americans are dying — murdered, assaulted, raped by illegal immigrants that the Democrats have released … It happened because Democrats cynically decided they wanted votes from illegals more than they wanted to protect our children.”
Cruz’s nativist rant shockingly parroted the racist screed of the white nationalist who attacked his constituents in his home state in El Paso. Some of the replacement conspiracy’s loudest proponents also crafted and contributed to the radical agenda outlined in Project 2025, including Russell Vought, Trump’s Office of Management and Budget director.
In the months since Trump’s inauguration, we’ve seen the “invasion” lie being used to make immigrants the central villain in a conspiratorial lie to further socialize a justification for undermining American democracy. Trump’s anti-immigrant crackdown has been at the tip of a very dangerous spear for democracy, with his administration stomping on due process, sacred freedoms like the freedom of speech, and sending a secret police out into the streets to sweep up both undocumented immigrant neighbors and the U.S. citizens standing up for them. Trump has even warned that he’s thinking of sending U.S. citizens to a foreign gulag. "Home-growns are next. The home-growns,” he told El Salvador’s dictator in April. “You gotta build about five more places. It's not big enough." Some U.S. citizens have even been told that they have no rights.
The shadow cast by the El Paso attack is devastating in its own right. Now the right is in an ongoing mission to mainstream the fringe, racist conspiracy theory that inspired it as well. Even those whose favorite thing is to watch America become a white nationalist state while also claiming to value lives should pause to think about the consequences of their actions. But we know they won’t.
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“August 3rd is a day El Paso will never forget. Six years ago, a man radicalized by white nationalist rhetoric drove across Texas to target our community because of who we are—immigrants, Latinos, families like mine,” Carrillo continued. “This rhetoric is dangerous. And six years later, it hasn’t gone away. Instead, it’s been mainstreamed further and has even informed the policy and law of my home state and this entire nation. Unfortunately, we’re seeing the hate that fueled the El Paso massacre become embedded in the law.”
“We honor the victims not only by remembering them, but by naming what led to their deaths and holding accountable those who continue to use the same dangerous words. El Paso will always stand for dignity, compassion, and truth. We won’t stay silent.”