Anti-Indian hate escalates in North Texas city amid housing fallout, viral flag video

A man tore an Indian national flag outside Frisco City Hall last week as crowds shouted anti-India slogans, the latest flashpoint in months of escalating hostility toward the Texas city’s South Asian community.

The now-viral June 2 video shows a man — identified as Clayton Walker — tearing apart the Indian flag as some onlookers cheered “Fuck India!” Walker later alleged that he was receiving death threats but defended his act as free speech. “Now I’m getting death threats from Indians,” he claimed. “All I did was exhibit my right to freedom of speech as an American.”

Nonprofit Hindus for Human Rights subsequently condemned the incident, describing it as evidence of a broader pattern in which anti-Indian and anti-immigrant hostility has escalated from social media into city council chambers and statewide political campaigns. The group also cited a May 19 incident in which a pardoned Jan. 6 rioter used a public comment period to target Hindu, Muslim and South Asian communities in Frisco.

The rhetoric has coincided with a sharp economic reversal. Indian buyers, once dominant in the Dallas-Fort Worth housing market, have reportedly pulled back amid H-1B restrictions and tech layoffs, sending prices in Collin County’s northern suburbs down nearly 9% year over year as of February. H-1B holders who lose their jobs have 60 days to find new sponsorship before risking deportation.

Priya Narayanaswamy’s husband Anand, an H-1B worker laid off from a Citibank IT role, died by suicide in August, as per Bloomberg. He had left a note expressing fear that he was unable to keep pace with artificial intelligence. She and her two children left Texas for India on April 20, with their house in Kellar likely headed toward foreclosure.

The Frisco situation carries implications for Asian American communities nationally. Saahas Kaul and Neha Suratran, prominent community voices, told NDTV that only a handful of people appear to be behind the recent surge in anti-India rhetoric at council meetings, but the consequences for the broader community have been real. Kaul noted that such campaigns have historically cycled through different immigrant communities.

Hindus for Human Rights has warned that similar rhetoric is now surfacing statewide, a trajectory that may foreshadow pressures in high-H-1B regions like Northern Virginia and the Seattle suburbs.