‘Hispanic Invasion of Texas’ Post Precedes El Paso Massacre

An anti-immigrant screed referring to a “Hispanic invasion of Texas” was posted online less than 20 minutes before the first 911 calls about Saturday’s mass shooting in El Paso, The New York Times reports.

Authorities are scrutinizing the unsigned posting to determine whether it was written by shooting suspect Patrick Crusius, a 21-year-old white man, who is now in custody.

The posting outlines a plan to divide America into territories by race, and warns that white people are being replaced by foreigners, the Times reports.

Twenty people died in the El Paso shooting, including three Mexican nationals. More than two dozen were injured. The online posting specifies that Hispanics were to be targeted because they “will take control of the local and state government of my beloved Texas” in a “political coup which will hasten the destruction of our country,” the Daily Mail reports.

Federal authorities confirmed Sunday that they were treating the massacre as an incident of domestic terrorism, Reuters reports.

The author of the 2,300-word posting notes that although the media would likely blame the shooting on Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, “My ideology has not changed for several years. My opinions … predate Trump and his campaign for president.”

But Saturday’s shooting appears to mirror a troubling trend toward nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiments worldwide. As the Times notes:

“From New Zealand to Pittsburgh to a synagogue in Poway, Calif., aggrieved white men over the last several months have turned to mass murder in service of hatred against immigrants, Jews and others they perceive as threats to the white race.”

The posting in the El Paso shooting, titled “The Inconvenient Truth,” “draws direct inspiration from the mass murder of Muslims at two mosques in New Zealand in March that left 51 people dead,” the Times reports.

“In that attack, the suspect published a manifesto online promoting a white supremacist theory called ‘the great replacement.’ The theory has been promoted by a French writer named Renaud Camus, and argues that elites in Europe have been working to replace white Europeans with immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa.”