Xenophobia / racism / prejudice / discrimination + stereotypes

It's all connected to an 'us vs them' mentality, which is naturally rooted in any species that survive in packs. Otherwise, it would be 'me vs them'.

In 'modern' societies, we should have the technology and information available to pretty much end the xenophobic tendencies - but it's difficult to go against our nature.

A basic buildup and/or recipe for creating Xenophobia etc. against "x group" of individuals:

Be introduced to the 'fact', that there are cultural differences between 'your group' and 'x group'.
Have unfortunate experiences with X group, either first-hand or second-hand, through relatives or people you know.
Continually get exposed to similar stories as the experiences mentioned above - Either from relatives/people they know or in the media - THIS HAPPENS A LOT.
At some point, forget that the stories represent individual experiences, and start to believe that such experiences are representative for an entire group of people, thus stripping them of their individualism as people.
Support, repeat, build on those stories to further develop the idea, that "they" can not be united with "us"...

Now, the cultural differences are where you can use your creativity to establish an authentic depiction of the society you're working with.

Cultural differences can be anything. Really. Some examples:

Believing in 'x god' or not believing a god, believing in souls, nature, life, etc.
Rituals, either based on beliefs, traditions, agreements, history, etc.
Supporting different political directions, ways of running countries, cities, society, different rights for minorities, etc.
Enjoying certain forms of entertaining: Bull-fights, Nascar, hunting, swimming, running, other sports, comedy (about what?), dancing (different kinds: attitudes, clothes, etc.), music, you can mention anything here - an individual can be entertained by as many different things as there are things in the world.
Eating habits...
Clothing
Language; either speaking a different one, speaking multiple, having an accent/dialect, etc.

A small exercise that could spark some ideas for working with these differences:

Think of the 5 people you know that have the MOST similar culture to your own, based on the criteria above (and anything you find relevant to your story)
After that, think of 5 people that are the LEAST similar to you, again, based on the criteria above.

Imagine, then, how easily someone could have an unfortunate experience, either with the people similar to you, or the people different from you, if they encounter them in a specific situation, where the differences are obvious.

Getting back to your question.

Any person, who has had bad experiences and/or a certain exposure to negative stories about X group of people, should be forgiven, to a certain extent, for believing that such are representative for other people that could 'belong to' X group.

We, the readers, would understand a character's xenophobia/racism/prejudice/discrimination, if we then get the slightest insight into what has led to it.

In your case of them flying off the handle and killing, you can tell, in your story, as it is in the real world, that SOME act this way, but probably not all.

Maybe your main character know that (some) people, that could be described as belonging to X group, are killing foreigners - but he/she has never experienced it first-hand, plus, the people that she knows, from X group, perhaps distance themselves from that behavior.

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