When Jose Romero immigrated to the United States around two years ago to work on a California farm with immigrants from Mexico and China, it was meant to be a haven of safety.
Romero was shot dead by a shooter on Monday near Half Moon Bay, close to San Francisco, along with six other agricultural employees. The massacre, which occurred only two days after another shooter opened fire at a ballroom in Monterey Park, an Asian American community south of Los Angeles, was shocking even in a country all too acquainted with gun violence.
The back-to-back shootings, which claimed a total of 18 lives, shook two tight-knit towns that had attracted immigrants looking for work.
Romero's cousin, Jose Juarez, spoke quietly and sourly on Tuesday as he took a break from working as a chef at a Mexican taqueria in a strip mall in Half Moon Bay. "You want to improve your life and then you wind up with this," he said.
Huu Can Tran, 72, frequently attended the Monterey Park dancing class, while Chunli Zhao, 66, worked on a Half Moon Bay farm, according to police. This only served to increase the sense of terror felt by immigrant populations who have been the subject of racist speech and violence in the United States.
According to data gathered by the University of California, Los Angeles and shared with Reuters, 32% of Asian immigrants and 23% of Latino immigrants in California say they are "very worried" about becoming victims of gun violence in their adopted home — three times the level of fear reported by people born in the United States.
For some people, the massacres heightened these worries.
Antonio Perez, who moved from Mexico to Half Moon Bay in 1983, said he feels torn between gun violence in the US and cartel violence in his own country.
Perez shook his head and remarked, "We never anticipated this sort of severity here. Such a disaster.
In Monterey Park, around 380 miles (610 km) south of the dance hall shooting, locals voiced concern that the poison of America's gun culture and pandemic of mass shootings was spreading to Asian-American neighbourhoods.
Guns are available everywhere in America, according to 36-year-old Chinese-born Frank Hio. "This place is unsafe."
People in the flourishing neighbourhood known for its Asian shops and eateries expressed shock that the shooter was a local.
Rolando Favis, 72, who immigrated to the United States from the Philippines 38 years ago, said that both the gunmen and the victims were Asian.
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