A group of teenagers who appear to be Hispanic were caught on video wearing white Klan robes and chanting racial slurs at a Halloween gathering, and the El Paso KKK footage now has the city’s police chief, its congresswoman and the local NAACP demanding accountability.
Video:
The clips started spreading over the weekend after FitFam El Paso, a local social media page, shared them. They show about six people in pointed white hoods and robes, first in what looks like a backyard and then walking as a group down a dark street on the city’s East Side. In one video, the group chants “we hate” followed by the N word. Other teens off camera can be heard laughing and egging them on.
No one in the robes has been publicly identified. Atlanta Black Star reported that most of them appear to be Hispanic, in a city where Hispanic residents make up about 81 percent of the population. That detail is a big reason the video has traveled far beyond Texas. People online are asking how kids from a community that white supremacists have targeted ended up dressed as the most recognizable white supremacist group in American history, aiming the N word at Black people.
A caption on one widely shared repost claims the person filming calls the group “the team,” which has fueled speculation that they play high school sports together. Police and school officials have not confirmed that.
El Paso Police Chief Peter Pacillas said Monday that his department is reviewing whether anyone broke the law, including disorderly conduct. In Texas, that charge can cover using abusive or offensive language in public that is likely to start a fight.
“Symbols and language associated with the Ku Klux Klan represent a history of terror, violence and racial hatred,” Pacillas said. “They have no place in our community. Treating that history as a costume or a joke is unacceptable.”
He added that free expression has limits once it crosses into conduct that threatens public order or other people’s safety, and he asked anyone with information to contact the department. He also put some of it on the parents, saying families play an essential role in teaching young people that hatred and intimidation have no place in El Paso.
Rep. Veronica Escobar, who represents El Paso in Congress, posted a statement Sunday calling the reports “deeply disturbing and unacceptable.” She said the KKK represents a shameful history of white supremacy, racial terror and violence against Black Americans and other communities of color, and that “no El Pasoan is too young to understand that racism has no place in our community.”
On Monday, members of the El Paso NAACP gathered outside the Enrique Moreno County Courthouse to address the El Paso KKK incident directly, calling out the “hatred, terrorism and racism” the Klan stands for. The branch also connected it to the darkest day in the city’s modern history. On August 3, 2019, a gunman drove more than 600 miles to an El Paso Walmart and killed 23 people after posting a racist screed about a “Hispanic invasion” of Texas. The NAACP reminded the city that the same white supremacist ideology at the root of the Klan drove that attack on Mexicans and immigrants.
El Paso also had its own Klan chapter in the 1920s. Known as Frontier Klan No. 100, it signed up about 3,500 local members before it collapsed later that decade.
Some posts online have compared the El Paso KKK video to a 2010 case in Woodsboro, Texas, where high school students in Klan costumes attacked a Black teen with a stun gun on Halloween. The two cases are not connected.
Police have not announced any arrests or charges, and it is still unclear whether the gathering was a private party or which school, if any, the teens attend.
