Rev. Samuel Rodriguez on El Paso Shooting: We Grieve Over This Terror Targeting Hispanic Community

Yesterday a gunman armed with a rifle shot and killed 20 people in a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. Twenty-six others were injured and sent to local hospitals.

Footage of the event depicts a crowd of horrified shoppers scrambling out of the store with their hands over their heads.

Police took the shooting suspect, a 21-year-old white man named Patrick Crusius, into custody.

Authorities believe he was targeting the Hispanic community as they continue investigating a racist manifesto he allegedly wrote in response to “the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, urged political leaders to depoliticize immigration to prevent further terror attacks on immigrant communities.

“The NHCLC’s community of thousands upon thousands of churches is profoundly grieving at the terror unleashed in El Paso today, terror targeting our nation’s beloved Hispanic community. We urge our political leaders, Democrat and Republican, to once-and-for-all depoliticize immigration in this country and instead embrace a fact-based approach to this and to all political questions that divide us. Even more importantly, we call upon people of sincere faith in every corner of our country to recommit themselves to loving the ‘other’ and to begin to pray with all their might that God would heal our broken land.”