A few days ago, a white native-born man walked into a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, and murdered twenty-two people with an assault rifle. His manifesto made it clear that he was targeting Latino immigrants and children of immigrants, believing that they threatened to “replace” the native-born population. “If we can get rid of enough people,” the shooter wrote, “then our way of life can be more sustainable.”

We have reason to be concerned that racist, anti-immigrant hate crimes will escalate as the Trump presidency wears on. “When Mexico sends its people,” said Donald Trump on the campaign trail in 2015, “they’re not sending their best. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” In 2018, he said of immigrants, “You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals.”

So far, hate-motivated murder of immigrants is thankfully still relatively rare. But a more common type of brutality characterizes working-class immigrant life: exploitation. Exploitation is deeply implicated in xenophobic violence, and our strategy to combat bigotry must confront it directly.