Using the Brown shootings to demonize immigrants won’t help Providence heal
The news that officials found dead the man suspected of killing two Brown University students, wounding nine others and effectively terrorizing our tight-knit town of Providence, Rhode Island, brought some relief that our nightmare had ended.
But the revelation of the identity of the suspected killer of MukhammadAziz Umurzokov and Ella Cook brought new concerns, specifically that the Trump administration and the right-wing-media ecosystem would use the fact that 48-year-old Claudio Manuel Neves Valente was foreign-born to stoke our country’s already raging flames of nativism and xenophobia.
Providence will need a lot of care and help in the months ahead. We don’t need more anti-immigrant policies or hate.
Valente, who briefly studied physics at Brown decades ago, was from Portugal, and he used a diversity immigrant visa lottery program to enter the U.S. in 2017. Within hours of the announcement of the deceased suspect’s identity, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced that, at the president’s direction, she would immediately pause the visa program that let him in.
Having lived in Providence for most of my life, and having been a journalist here for more than a decade, I say with certainty that the people here don’t want President Donald Trump using this tragedy to fuel his anti-immigrant agenda. It would be harmful and disrespectful to hijack our heartbreak for this purpose.
According to recent census data, more than 30% of Providence’s residents are foreign-born. A 2020 report from the city noted that “over 47% of residents [speak] a language other than English at home.”
And we like it this way.
Yes, the man who seems to have carried out the horrific mass shooting was from another country. And yes, his actions were loathsome and criminal. But a narrow focus on that background gives an incomplete portrait of immigrants, immigration and mass shootings. The Cato Institute reported in April that a “total of 298 mass shooters were responsible for 1,733 murders and 2,459 people injured in the United States from 1966 through the end of 2024” and that 255, or 86%, were native-born.
As far as immigration is concerned, a full account of the Brown shooting would mention that one of the victims, Umurzokov, was from Uzbekistan. He was, by all accounts, a bright, curious, promising and altruistic kid. A mensch.
A full account would note that Providence’s chief of police, Oscar Perez, who helped steer the investigation that identified and located the suspected shooter, was born in Medellín, Colombia.
A full account would note the immigrant-owned restaurants near Brown that stepped forward with acts of generosity and care. For example, the Indian-born owner of Kabob and Curry, who has been described by a Providence Journal food writer as “one of the warmest men you will meet,” embodying “the heart and spirit of America,” gave out more than 100 meals to community members, the Brown Daily Herald reported.
Providence will need a lot of care and help in the months ahead. We don’t need more anti-immigrant policies or hate.
Brown, like many American schools, draws heavily from other countries for its students, faculty and staff.
Certainly, increased immigration restrictions won’t help Brown, which, like many American schools, draws heavily from other countries for its students, faculty and staff. A 2023 university press release noted that “44% of all new graduate students are international students.” Earlier this year, the Brown Daily Herald reported on immigration fears ahead of Trump’s second inauguration and an advisory notice from the school that foreign students and staff should return to the U.S. before Trump’s swearing-in.
Anti-immigrant policies don’t serve Providence, either. This is a city where, if you walk in any direction from Barus & Holley, the physics and engineering building where the mass shooting happened, you’ll soon hit a restaurant that celebrates one world culture or another. There’s Aleppo Sweets on Ives Street; Aguardente on Governor; Caliente Mexican Grill, East Side Pockets and Al-Shami on Thayer; Rong Chic, Jahunger and Sakura on Wickenden; Lotus Pepper, Wara Wara and India Restaurant on Hope. I could go on.
Rhode Island Rep. Gabe Amo is the son of West African immigrants, one of whom — his father — owns a liquor store in Providence. The recently deceased Judge Frank Caprio, of “Caught in Providence” fame, is the son of an Italian immigrant. In 2019, Carmen Castillo, a Dominican immigrant whom a news report described as a “proud hotel housekeeper,” was the subject of a documentary because of her other job as a Providence city councilwoman.
We in Providence, the capital of our country’s smallest state, have little influence over how the rest of this big country talks about us.
But if anyone asks, tell them this: Using our tragedy to demonize immigrants doesn’t help us heal. It deepens our wounds. And it can only serve to erode what makes this city so special.
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