On the morning of Aug. 3, 2019, a 21-year-old white supremacist uploaded a document to the message board 8chan explaining why he was about to kill as many Mexican people as he could. This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas, he stated. They are the instigators, not me. I am simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by the invasion.

He had driven 10 hours from Allen to El Paso, Texas the border city where 80% of the population is Hispanic with an AK-47 and a thousand rounds of hollow-point ammunition. He parked at a Walmart, entered the store and opened fire, ultimately killing 23 people in what has been described as the deadliest anti-Latino hate crime in American history.

Among his victims was Luis Alfonso Juarez, 90, who was grocery shopping with his wife. Dont be afraid, Juarez told her before bullets tore into both their bodies, ending his life and leaving his wife, who survived, suddenly without her partner of 70 years.

This past July, the couples daughter, Meg Juarez, had the opportunity to look the young white supremacist who ripped her family apart in the face. Native Americans and Mexicans were already here before your American settler homies rolled in, Juarez told him at a sentencing hearing. Think about that when you say youre defending your country.

Now, when Meg Juarez checks the news, almost every Republican politician and right-wing pundit sounds like the man who shot her parents. Theyre talking about an invasion at the border and the great replacement of white voters wrought by immigration.

That language that they continue to use, which is fear-mongering and demonizing immigrants, is just stripping people of their humanity, Meg Juarez told HuffPost this week. When they use that language, it dehumanizes these folks, and thats how we got somebody to go to El Paso and shoot immigrants because he thought that he was protecting something.