Organizers were aware of racist threat, saying the attacker was ‘not the first white man with guns to terrorize us’

“He’s not the first white man to come in from out of town with guns to terrorize us.”

One week after what is believed to be the deadliest attack against Latinos in recent US history, the El Paso activist Ana Tiffany Deveze sat in Casa Carmelita, a community center and collective for grassroots organizing, talking about the 21-year-old shooter who confessed to police that he had driven 650 miles across Texas specifically to target “Mexicans”.

Many in the town known for its friendliness were still reeling from the shooting that killed 22, but Deveze was left feeling heartbroken and furious that she could not feel shocked by the white supremacy that led to these killings.

“It’s infuriating,” Deveze said. “It feels like we’re screaming into an abyss, and then something horrific like this happens. No one gives a fuck until someone dies.”

Deveze and other organizers at Casa Carmelita had argued long before the shooting on 3 August that white supremacy had found its way into their friendly, binational corner of Texas, and they had warned that the community’s strong response against racism and discrimination would make it a target for attacks from the outside.

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They had had their own encounters. On the day Donald Trump visited El Paso, a man drove more than 10 hours from Houston to park in front of Casa Carmelita, donned latex gloves and shooter goggles and pulled out weapons in full view of organizers. No one got hurt, but the display left the activists deeply concerned.

Casa Carmelita is located just one block from the Mexican border, the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) checkpoint visible from the front door. An air of fatigue hung over the collective at the end of last week. “Everybody knows somebody who was in that Walmart,” Deveze explained. “But more than that, now everybody knows what they’ve been trying to warn them of all along: white supremacy is here.”

Deveze said the treatment of undocumented families and children at the border, the deaths of several migrants while in custody of CBP, the rise in incendiary rhetoric and a surge in rightwing paramilitary groups targeting undocumented people at the border had left many in the community unsettled.

“I believe that El Paso, as essentially a binational city, is itself a symbol of cultural resistance, a symbol that celebrates multiculturalism, a symbol in direct contradiction of the wall that is trying to be built here,” said Zeb Green, another Casa Carmelita organizer. “That’s why I think there was a target on El Paso. It’s that symbol of cultural resistance that they want to attack.”

“We’re the target because we’re the [new] Ellis Island of America,” said Jeanette Walker, an organizer with the local Democratic party, at a rally earlier last week.

Walker sees first-hand how committed El Paso is to aiding asylum-seeking immigrants who are crossing the borders. In the aftermath of the shooting, as in the aftermath of other tragedies, the city saw an uptick in volunteerism and community service, but few were getting involved for the first time, Walker said, especially in aiding the migrants. “Wherever they come from, they’re part of us,” she said. “We take care of them. We’ve been feeding migrants that come through here before ‘send them back’.”

Their compassion and inclusivity is what makes them a target, Walker added. “People hate that we’re taking care of people from other countries that they demonize,” she said. “They build walls and we don’t support that. We just want just immigration laws.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Zeb Green and Ana Tiffany Deveze at Casa Carmelita. Photograph: Courtesy Ana Tiffany Deveze

Last Wednesday, Green, the organizer, put up a sign in Casa Carmelita’s front window. “Bienvenidos Migrantes! Trump No! Welcome Immigrants!”

It was the day Donald Trump visited El Paso amid protests. Many went out to Washington Park to rally against the president, but Green opened up Casa Carmelita for anyone that wanted to commune there.

Not long after, a man driving a pickup truck emblazoned with a photo of Trump dressed as Rambo and holding a bazooka parked in front of the building. Bumper stickers for the conspiracy-theory website Infowars decorated the truck. “When they come for your guns, give them your bullets,” one read.

The man approached Green’s girlfriend outside of the building and asked her if the sign in the front window was hers. “She said yes,” Green recalled. “And then he said, ‘It’s a shame that all of this is necessary. I don’t see it changing anytime soon.’”

The man, later identified as Thomas Bartram, 21, returned to his car and began pulling out a large lockbox from the bed of his truck. He changed from his prescription glasses into shooting range goggles. Believing another shooting was about to take place, Green and his girlfriend called 911.

Deveze observed the man, wearing latex gloves, pulling out a large hunting knife. She saw a bag of white powder. The activists ran out the back alley, where they encountered two women running away, saying they had seen a man with a gun. At that point, the police pulled up.

“Central patrol officers responded to a suspicious subject at the 900 block of Stanton near Casa Carmelita,” the El Paso police department tweeted on Thursday. “The subject was detained, interviewed and released after it was determined that no criminal offense had been committed.”

The police told the organizers that “he has rights, too”, Deveze said. El Paso police did not immediately return requests for comment. In an interview with NBC News, Bartram said he had a permit to carry a pistol and denied having waved it around. He said he was wearing gloves and using the knife to eat prickly pears, and that the white powder was a protein supplement.

Wednesday’s incident has shaken Casa Carmelita. Members are working on developing security precautions with other organizations and finding out ways to document these occurrences. “Because if we have to wait for there to be a crime, people will be killed,” Green said.

“Backing down and not living our lives and not continuing to resist the injustice, that would just be letting these people win,” he added. “There’s the one death of letting them kill us. There’s another death of letting them make us hide and truly live our lives the way we need to. We’re not going to let them kill us twice.”