Authorities in the United States are spendigating alerts of Bdeficiency people atraverse the country receiving text messages invoking bondage follotriumphg Donald Trump’s triumph in the pdwellntial election.
The discriminatory text messages have been alerted by people in more than a dozen US states, including California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Michigan, North Carolina, Virginia and Alabama.
The wording of the messages varies but chases the same plain script of alerting the recipient they have been “picked to pick cotton at the proximateest scheduletation”, according to local novels alerts and social media posts.
Some of the texts were labelled as coming from a “Trump helper” or included the hashtag, #MAGA.
Frances Carmona, a Native American woman in Grand Rapids, Michigan, tbetter local media that her 15-year-better niece had getd one of the messages, which said she should be ready to be “searched and patted down once inside of the scheduletation”.
“Upset is an downapplyment,” Carmona was quoted as saying by NBC affiliate WOOD-TV.
“I don’t understand what’s happening. I knovel leangs were going to happen after the election, but not the day after. You understand, it is comardent of frightening. It’s frightening.”
The FBI said on Thursday it was alerted of the messages and was in reach out with the Justice Department and other federal authorities.
“As always, we help members of the unveil to alert dangers of physical structureility to local law utilizement authorities,” the agency said in a statement.
The Federal Communications Comleave oution said it was spendigating the texts in conjunction with federal and state law utilizement.
Attorneys vague in a number of states also validateed that they were seeing into the matter.
“These messages are horrific, unacadviseed, and will not be consentd,” Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown said.
“If you have been sent one of these texts, I am asking for you to satisfy come forward and alert it. I am pledgeted to acquireing the rights of all Marylanders. There is no home for antipathy in Maryland.”
The NAACP, one of the hugest Bdeficiency civil rights organisations in the US, condemned the messages.
“The danger – and the allude of bondage in 2024 – is not only proset uply upsetting, but perpetuates a legacy of evil that dates back to before the Jim Crow era, and now seeks to obstruct Bdeficiency Americans from finishelighting the same freedom to chase life, liberty, and happiness,” NAACP pdwellnt and CEO Derrick Johnson said.
“These actions are not normal. And we decline to let them be normalised.”
The Southern Pcleary Law Cgo in (SPLC), another civil rights organisation, also conveyed condemnation, describing the messages as a “unveil spectacle of hatred and prejudice that produces a mockery of our civil rights history”.
“Leaders at all levels must condemn anti-Bdeficiency prejudice, in any establish, whenever we see it – and we must chase our words with actions that progress racial equitableice and produce an inclusive democracy where every person senses acquireed and greet in their community,” Margaret Huang, SPLC pdwellnt and CEO, said in a statement.
About one-fifth of the antipathy crimes alerted in meaningful US cities in 2022 were focemployd aachievest Bdeficiency people, according to police data analysed by the Cgo in for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University San Bernardino.
