US teen held over Hindu temple attack plot: Is anti-Indian racism rising?

A 19-year-old American who expressed ⁠white supremacist ⁠views has been arrested on the day United States police believe he tried to attack a Hindu place of worship.

Police in the state of Illinois say they have thwarted a potential mass shooting and arrested Alexandros Paporakis, a Taco Bell cashier from the Chicago suburb of Palatine.

Prosecutors say he told colleagues he “couldn’t wait” to kill Indian people.

The case comes amid mounting concern among Indian Americans about hostility towards their community, fuelled by bitter political fights over immigration and skilled-worker visas.

So what do we know about the alleged plot, and is anti-Indian racism really on the rise in the US?

What happened?

Investigators say they believe Paporakis planned to attack the largest Hindu temple in Aurora, about 40 miles (65km) southwest of the Chicago suburb of Palatine in Illinois.

“However, the specific intended location has not been confirmed and remains under investigation,” police said.

Paporakis allegedly told colleagues that Sunday would be “a special day”.

According to prosecutors, a work colleague told investigators that Paporakis telephoned him on Sunday afternoon, saying his gun had jammed, ABC7 Chicago reported. He allegedly told his coworker he had left “super fast” without being seen.

He allegedly sent a video of the rifle failing to fire and said he wanted to try again once it was repaired, Fox 32 Chicago reported.

Two co-workers called police. Officers from Palatine and neighbouring Mount Prospect then arrested him as he left his home.

“The seriousness of this alleged threat cannot be overstated,” said Palatine Police Chief William Nord.

Paporakis faces felony charges of “making a terrorist threat” and “unlawful possession of a weapon”.

On Wednesday, a judge ordered him to be held in jail before a trial.

What more do we know about the suspect?

Prosecutors say Paporakis openly described himself to colleagues at work as a white supremacist.

He allegedly sent a co-worker an eight-page document titled, Why I fought: A.K.A. (Aurora Shooter’s Manifesto), according to a court document obtained by The Associated Press news agency.

It described Indian, Jewish and Black people as “subhumans” and set out a plan to kill as many of them as possible.

In it, he allegedly referred to himself as “a sociopathic white supremacist Neo Nazi filled with hatred, fantasising about mass murder nearly every day”.

According to prosecutors, he wrote that he had been planning the attack for two years and had researched his target using YouTube and Google Street View, Fox 32 reported.

Prosecutors also said he had mental health issues and lived with his mother, according to ABC7.

A search of his home turned up an AR-style rifle without a serial number, loaded magazines, a gas canister labelled with a slur aimed at South Asians and items bearing Nazi symbolism.

Is anti-Indian hate rising in the US?

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) does not count crimes against Indian Americans as a specific category. The closest measures are crimes against Hindus and Sikhs, most of whom in the US trace their roots to India.

Anti-Sikh crimes appear to be climbing. Police reported 234 anti-Sikh offences to the FBI in the 12 months to October, up from 183 in the previous 12 months, a rise of about 28 percent.

Anti-Hindu offences have remained lower and broadly steady, at 63 over the past two years, or two to three a month.

However, Hindu temples have been targeted.

Over two nights in late June 2025, an estimated 20 to 30 rounds were fired at a Krishna temple in Spanish Fork, Utah, while people were inside, according to the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. No one was hurt.

Two months later, Illinois Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi condemned a break-in and vandalism at a Hindu temple in Santa Clara, California, saying incidents targeting Hindu temples across the US “are on the rise”.

Online, the picture is starker.

A report by the Centre for the Study of Organised Hate (CSOH) found the monthly volume of hateful posts about South Asians on X more than tripled between January 2024 and June 2026.

Indian Americans say they are feeling it, too. A Carnegie Endowment for International Peace survey of 1,000 Indian Americans, conducted by YouGov between November 2025 and January 2026, found that one in four had been verbally abused with slurs since the start of 2025.

Nine percent said they had been physically threatened, and 4 percent physically assaulted.

Almost one in five said they had avoided wearing Indian dress in public.

Yet the survey also found no significant change in the number of people reporting personal discrimination since 2020.

Devesh Kapur, a professor of South Asian studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and a co-author of the Carnegie survey, said the threat is growing.

“White supremacist extremism is clearly rising,” he told Al Jazeera. “Hostility towards Indians has particularly increased among the MAGA right in President Trump’s second term.”

What’s behind it?

Much of the hostility has been driven by fights over immigration, researchers say. Trump campaigned on the issue of immigration in the lead-up to the presidential election of 2024, and has launched sweeping restrictions on immigration – including “military-style” federal raids on immigrant communities, resulting in the deaths of some activists – since returning to the White House in January 2025.

Indians receive more than 70 percent of H-1B visas, which US employers use to bring skilled foreign workers to the country. Spikes in online hate have followed political rows over the programme.

In July 2025, President Donald Trump criticised US technology companies for outsourcing jobs to India. Days later, amid a trade dispute, he wrote on Truth Social that India and Russia could “take their dead economies down together”. That September, he imposed a $100,000 fee for certain new H-1B petitions. US courts are still deciding on the legality of the fee and have currently blocked the payment requirement.

Two-thirds of Indian Americans opposed the fee, the Carnegie survey found.

Figures close to Trump have also displayed anti-Indian attitudes. In September 2024, far-right activist Laura Loomer, at one time a close Trump ally, wrote that the White House would “smell like curry” if former Vice President Kamala Harris won the presidency. The White House, then under President Joe Biden, called the remark “repugnant”.

Kapur said Vice President JD Vance, whose wife is the daughter of Indian immigrants, had himself used “dog whistle” language, calling H-1B visa holders, most of them Indians, “indentured servants”. “It is therefore not surprising that such incendiary talk can spill over into violence,” Kapur said.

Government accounts have joined in, too. Last month, a since-deleted Department of Homeland Security post featured a Sikh man identified as “Mr Singh” and told him to “get off our roads”. The post came amid a Trump administration campaign to highlight the presence of undocumented immigrants in commercial trucking, particularly Sikhs and Indians.

Researchers also point to the growing prominence of South Asians in US politics, from Harris to New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and to the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, which claims white populations are being deliberately replaced.

Paporakis is next due in court on October 30.