Opinion | El Paso, Two Weeks Later

He saw people with brown skin, an enemy who needed to be taken out.

It’s no surprise that he thought Mexicans and immigrants were his enemies. In the minds of many, we have been dehumanized by the hateful words used by Fox News pundits and by President Trump — the man with the loudest voice and most powerful bully pulpit in the world. The man whose words have repeatedly told the country that brown migrants are a threat — to our national security, to our safety and to our identity.

The man who called us “rapists,” “criminals” and “animals.” Who said we were ““bringing drugs and crime.” When he rhetorically asked a rally how to stop migrants from crossing into the United States, someone yelled, “Shoot them!”

It’s not just words about immigrants and Mexico that have caused pain: There’s the separation of children from their families, a policy that has already damaged an entire generation of Central American children, and policies that push migrants and asylum seekers into Mexico, moving them farther away from safety, from due process, from America.

The strategy is cruelty.

While communities like mine — the lawyers, the nonprofits, the journalists, the activists, the people of good will — scramble to help the vulnerable in any way possible, the president’s team, his enablers in Congress and the media have been giving him applause and cover.

And on Aug. 3, a day of horror so profound that it should have served as a wake-up call for the nation, the enablers offered thoughts and prayers.

But after the thoughts and prayers, there was a doubling down. President Trump, who in the hours after the massacres in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, talked tough about action on gun violence legislation, has predictably already backed down, saying, “We do have a lot of background checks right now.”

And just days later, the Trump re-election campaign defended its use of the term “invasion” to describe migrant families who come to the United States.