For many, it's clear why El Paso was targeted in the shooting
When a gunman stormed a crowded Walmart in El Paso on Saturday, killing at least 20 people and injuring more than two dozen others, the Texas border city was hit with an unprecedented level of bloodshed and grief.
Along with another mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio some 13 hours later, the massacre in this border community, unaccustomed to such large-scale acts of violence, reignited the highly contentious national debate around proposals to regulate guns.
And for many residents of El Paso — an epicenter of another of the nation's most divisive issues, immigration — the gruesome attack not only underscored the need to restrict access to high-caliber weapons like the one used by the alleged assailant, it also represented a clear and direct assault on the city's diversity and its standing as a welcoming community for migrants.
"We really don't have to guess. We know. We were targeted because the terrorist wanted to attack a mostly Latino and immigrant community," Democratic Rep. Veronica Escobar, who represents El Paso, told CBS News in an interview.
Nestled in the Chihuahuan Desert, El Paso, Spanish for "the pass," sits at the intersection of two U.S. states, Texas and New Mexico, and shares an international border with Ciudad Juárez, the largest city in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. In this predominantly Latino community, home to a large group of binational workers and bilingual residents, many business signs are in both English and Spanish and family-owned Mexican eateries stand alongside hipster coffee shops.
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