In recent years, I’ve written about the story of Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh man who was murdered in Arizona in the first documented hate crime in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The gunman — who apparently mistook Sodhi for a Muslim — reportedly declared during his arrest: “I stand for America all the way!” The bigotry Sodhi encountered has always seemed — to me, at least — analogous to the racist and xenophobic entitlement that Donald Trump and many of his followers express toward nonwhite people, particularly those believed to be immigrants.
And now we may have another prime example of this similarity out of Colorado, where authorities have accused a white Trump supporter of attacking a reporter he suggested might not be a U.S. citizen.
As The Associated Press reported:
Patrick Thomas Egan, 39, was arrested Dec. 18 in Grand Junction, Colorado, after police say he followed KKCO/KJCT reporter Ja’Ronn Alex’s vehicle for around 40 miles (64 kilometers) from the Delta area. Alex told police that he believed he had been followed and attacked because he is Pacific Islander.
After arriving in Grand Junction, Egan, who was driving a taxi, pulled up next to Alex at a stoplight and, according to an arrest affidavit, said something to the effect of: “Are you even a U.S. citizen? This is Trump’s America now! I’m a Marine and I took an oath to protect this country from people like you!”
According to the police affidavit, the reporter drove to his news station headquarters and ran to the door, but the attacker tackled him and began to strangle him before station employees pried Egan’s arms loose. Egan was arrested and charged with second-degree assault, bias-motivated crimes and misdemeanor harassment. (Egan’s lawyer did not immediately return the AP’s request for comment.)
Meanwhile, The New York Times reported just last week on an anonymous letter circulating in rural Oregon that called for residents to track and report nonwhite people they think might be undocumented immigrants in order to assist with Trump’s mass deportation plans.
Alleged incidents like these are precisely why I and others have been sounding the alarm on the MAGA movement’s praise for violent vigilantes, its alignment with militias and paramilitary groups, and its violent rhetoric toward immigrants. Because the natural result of a culture that relishes these things is a society in which nonwhite people, no matter their immigration status, are subject to constant suspicion — and at times, outright violence — at the whim of their white counterparts.