After El Paso Attack, Mexico Demands Protections for Mexicans in the U.S.
CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — Mexico demanded protections for Mexicans and Mexican-Americans living in the United States and threatened legal action on Sunday, a day after the shooting at an El Paso Walmart that left Mexican citizens among the dead and wounded.
Mexican authorities could seek to extradite the gunman on a terrorism charge and were planning legal action against the seller who provided the shooter with his weapon, said the foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard.
“We consider that the issue of arms is crucial,” he said.
The gunman who killed 20 in Saturday’s attack wrote an anti-immigrant manifesto that spoke of a “Hispanic invasion of Texas,” and many Mexicans saw the shooting as an expression of the tensions simmering between the United States and Mexico over immigration, guns and violence.
These tensions are often fueled by President Trump in divisive invectives that target Mexicans, Central Americans and others, and speak of migrant caravans as “an invasion of our country.”
“Xenophobic and racist discourse breeds hate crimes,” Martha Bárcena, the Mexican ambassador to the United States, said over Twitter. “Hispanic communities contribute enormously to the American society. We have to work for a respectful and compassionate dialogue between our countries and communities.”
Mr. Ebrard said the Mexican government would send a diplomatic note asking the United States to take a clear position against hate crimes. But Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, like Mr. Ebrard, did not comment on the American president’s broadsides — avoiding a confrontation with Mr. Trump, as he has done since taking office late last year.
Mr. López Obrador said he lamented “the events in El Paso.”
Here in Ciudad Juárez, just across the border from El Paso, as elsewhere along the border, populations are intertwined: Families live on either side. Children cross back and forth every day for school. Day-trippers head south to seek affordable medical care and north to shop.
The shooting — at a Walmart where Mexicans and Americans were shopping side by side for back-to-school bargains — seemed to strike at the heart of the two nations’ interconnectedness, targeting the easy coexistence that has become a little more tense, some said.
“There has been a lot of racism over the last few years,” said Graciela Guerra, 37, who was visiting Ciudad Juárez with her mother from another border state.
She said she didn’t know whether this increase was motivated by the president of the United States “sowing hatred,” or by his supporters.
“What could have happened in his life that he hates us so much?” Ms. Guerra said of Mr. Trump.
Many said they feel things have gotten worse.
“Trump is provoking them,” said Leticia Delgado, 60, a hotel room attendant in El Paso.
Mr. Trump has made slowing migration and increasing control over the border priorities of his administration, and has used threats of crippling tariffs and other measures to force Mr. López Obrador into acceding to many of his demands.
And yet guns, their availability in the United States, and their illegal transport to Mexico, which is suffering record violence, has seldom come up in their discussions.
Javier Martínez, an engineer who works for a manufacturing plant in Ciudad Juárez, said he goes into El Paso, and to the shopping mall that was attacked, frequently with his wife and two teenage daughters, but will reconsider these trips after the attack.
Mexicans would be safer if relations with the United States were better, he said, adding: “The one who has the most work to do is the U.S. government, with their gun laws.”
Some feared that in the government’s silence, and the public focus on Mr. Trump’s rhetoric, the importance of the broader policy debate might be forgotten.
“Look at the issues at stake here — guns, the border, migrants,” said Carlos Bravo Regidor, an analyst in Mexico City. “If our president doesn’t seize the opportunity now to raise the level of discourse with the Trump administration and the U.S., he will never do it.”
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