For the past several years, Mr. Trump hasn’t just talked the white nationalist talk, he’s walked the walk. He has tried to limit our right to vote, restrict our access to housing and health care, prevent us from being counted in the census, and he has turned his back on our fellow Americans in Puerto Rico. Rather than focus on the many issues critical to the American public, he has refined his attacks on Latinos and immigrants and wielded his executive power to fulfill his deeply bigoted views.

Trump’s three-part strategy has been made pretty clear: Dehumanize Latinos with hateful rhetoric; strip away federal protections that safeguard our rights; and promote policies that marginalize our families and stoke division, fear and violence. We should have spent the last two and a half years working to advance our country. Instead, we had to focus on protecting the progress we have made — while also responding to the administration’s cruel actions that traumatize children, inflict pain and break down communities.

Mr. Trump has not done this alone. He has a powerful group of enablers among Republican leaders in Washington, some of whom on the campaign trail called his vile language “bigoted,” “offensive” and “un-American” but who today can’t seem to find their voices or their backbones. Their silence in the face of increased hate and violence amounts to complicity.

For years we have dreaded this day. What we saw Saturday in El Paso is directly connected to the continuing, hate-driven rhetoric and policies coming out of the White House. Violence is a terrifying but not unexpected outcome when our nation’s leader tries to normalize hate.

It is no wonder that gun violence was a top-five issue for the first time ever in the poll of Latino voters we released today. Latinos are fearful for their families and their country, and they have every reason to be.