'There's a lot of hate': rightwing racism stirs south Asian mobilization in Texas

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T

In state that has become 'ground zero' for discrimination against south Asians, experts say they are seeing voters motivated to fight back

Last winter, while Pooja Sethi was canvassing to become the Democratic candidate for the Texas house of representatives, she received a text from a staff member alerting her to a post on X. The Turning Point USA influencer Savanah Hernandez - a Trump supporter known for creating videos that target immigrants - had posted a photo of Sethi's campaign banner with the caption: "Welcome to politics in Texas."

The post went viral.

The responses were so vile, Sethi said, "that I called my team and I said I'm going to go home because I need to be with my son. I'm a little scared about what's happening right now." The far right even turned her name into a racist slogan: "Don't Pooja my Texas."

If elected, Sethi will become the first Asian Democratic woman and south Asian woman in the Texas legislature. "I didn't run to have to sit here and combat anti-Indian hate. I didn't know that this was going to be a thing," said Sethi to a room of about 50 south Asians gathered at a private community listening session on anti-south Asian hate in Austin at the height of election season in October.

The event, which included Washington congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, was hosted by Indian American Impact, a nonpartisan group that supports south Asian candidates and voter engagement.

Across the country, anti-south Asian hate has spiked since Trump took office. According to theCenter for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH), online rhetoric against south Asians surged by 240% between January 2024 and June 2026. In addition to citing xenophobia and racism, the report finds that economic resentment casting south Asians as "invaders" and "job thieves", increased visibility in politics, and anti-migrant policies that include Trump's prohibitive annual fee on H1-B visa applications, have contributed to the sharp rise in hate against south Asian communities of all faiths and nationalities.

Rightwing public officials too have ramped up the xenophobic and racist rhetoric ahead of the midterm election: in September, on X, the Department of Homeland Security posted an AI-generated image resembling a movie poster that featured a Sikh man facing off against a character that looked like Optimus Prime from Transformers. The caption read: "America for Americans. Get off our roads, you don't know how to drive Mr. Singh." The agency deleted the image amid backlash.

Days later, Bo French, the Republican candidate for the Texas railroad commission, posted a photo of a photo of what appeared to be majority south Asian American UT Austin students celebrating the school's football win with the caption: "I heard UT graduation this year look like this, I didn't believe it, the problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined."

This rhetoric stokes fear and translates into physical violence, says Chintan Patel, executive director of Indian American Impact. "There's a lot of hate and discrimination that has been spreading for years on social media and online … but those things, they make it to the foreground."

About a week after the DHS post, a Sikh truck driver was stabbed 17 times at a rest stop in Wyoming, deepening fears of violence within the Sikh community. In October - the day before Indian American Impact's event in Austin - news broke of an attempted mass shooting at a Hindu temple in Aurora, Illinois, where a self-described white supremacist armed with a rifle and body armor had planned to "kill Indian people".

Texas has become the "ground zero" for anti-south Asian hate, says Chanda Parbhoo, founder and executive director of nonpartisan voter engagement nonprofit South Asian American Voter Empowerment of Texas Education Fund (SAAVETX EF). According to 2021 US census estimates, more than 600,000 south Asians live in Texas - the second-largest population of south Asians in the country behind California. South Asians make up one of the state's fastest growing ethnic groups.

Unlike California, however, Texas is a breeding ground for far-right policies that then travel to other state legislatures across the country.

View image in fullscreenChanda Parbhoo, the founder of SAAVETX Education Fund, at a community event in Dallas in 2023. Photograph: Jamie Stengle/AP

Ahead of the 2026 midterms, Texas Republicans have built a platform on Islamophobia and attacks on migrants, issues that closely intersect with the attacks on south Asians writ large. In the last year, Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, who is currently tied in the Senate race against Democrat James Talarico, sued to shut down the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation's largest Muslim civil rights group. Paxton and Republican governor Greg Abbott deemed Cair a " terrorist organization", fabricated charges against a North Texas mosque, and launched an investigation into unsubstantiated claims of H1-B visa fraud - an inquiry that disproportionately targets Indian immigrants.

In the state legislature, Republican representative Brent Money launched a "Sharia Free Texas Caucus," which has amassed nearly 40 members, following the creation of a national "Sharia Free America Caucus" started by Texas congressmen Keith Self and Chip Roy in 2025. According to a 2026 survey by Stop AAPI Hate Action, ICE deportations of south Asians are approximately 14 times higher under Trump's second term - in July, Texas accounted for nearly a third of the nation's ICE arrests, the largest share of any state in the country.

"The hate that's happening right now is more than anything that I've seen. More than during 9/11," said Texas state representative Salman Bhojani, who immigrated to Texas from Pakistan as a teenager. "This is not the Texas that I immigrated to."

View image in fullscreenSalman Bhojani at a meeting in Austin in June. Photograph: Austin American-Statesman/Hearst Newspapers/Getty Images

In 2022, Bhojani became one of the first Muslims and south Asians in the state legislature and arguably the most visible Muslim in Texas politics. At a re-election campaign fundraising event held two days before early voting began in Texas, Bhojani told the Guardian: "I get these calls a lot, like, every almost on a daily basis, where somebody is calling to say, "My dad was picked up by ICE, my brother was picked up by ICE, or my sister was walking on campus in a hijab and somebody pulled a knife on her."

In Bhojani's city of Euless, a white woman was sentenced to five years in prison for attempted murder after she tried to drown a three-year-old Muslim girl in 2024.

Bhojani launched the Religious Freedom Caucus to promote religious tolerance. "Today, Muslims are on the chopping block. Tomorrow maybe other communities - we cannot afford that. We need to stop it right now," he said.

While south Asian communities have become a target, as a voting bloc, they remain largely overlooked by either party. "We are still underrepresented, overlooked, and we're not getting the attention that we should probably receive for the powerhouse that we could be," says Parbhoo.

This gap prompted SAAVETX EF to collaborate with the US Immigration Policy Center at University of California, San Diego, for a first-of-its-kind statewide survey, released on Wednesday. The Belonging Under Pressure: 2026 South Asian Community Survey of about 1,000 south Asian Texans confirmed what Parbhoo has observed from voter participation efforts on the ground: more than half - 57.5% - reported at least one experience of hate in Texas during the past year due to race, ethnicity, religion, or immigration background.

A majority felt politically disenfranchised: 63.7% of respondents said their community's concerns are not well understood or not understood at all by elected officials, and 53.6% believe their community holds little to no political power.

But the survey also suggests that south Asians are motivated to vote. "Sometimes we see the lack of political agency lead to a lack of political participation," said Tom Wong, associate professor of political science and director of the US Immigration Policy Center at UCSD. "But what we're seeing in the poll is that there's high motivation to vote - to mobilize, organize, and change who's in office."

Parbhoo says that as of 26 October, one week into early voting, the total number of south Asian Texans who voted in 2022 has already been surpassed.

"People have talked about the rising Hispanic electorate turning Texas blue. But it isn't any single community. It is a multiracial coalition that includes Asians," said Wong. "Asian Americans can decide outcomes in tight races," he said, including Michigan, Georgia, and North Carolina.

"I think that's one of the major takeaways, and we are thinking it might happen in Texas."

Beto O'Rourke, for example, lost the Senate election to Ted Cruz in 2018 by a margin of 2.6% - about 215,000 votes. The south Asian vote makes up that "margin of victory", Parbhoo says.

Bhojani's own race is further proof. In 2018, he was elected to the city council by only 37 votes. "These races are decided by razor-thin margins," Bhojani said. "People don't realize that in my city, 37 votes can make a difference."

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