Racist text messages targeting Black people across the US just hours after Donald Trump won a second presidency have now expanded to the Hispanic communities – and homophobic versions have been aimed at LGBTQ+ people, the FBI said on Friday.
Authorities say they are investigating the messages – which now include emails – and that they have not received reports of violent acts stemming from the hateful messages.
The recipients of the messages include high school students being told that they have been “selected for deportation or to report to a re-education camp”, the FBI said in a statement.
After the 5 November US presidential election saw Trump returned to the White House, Black Americans reported receiving racist text messages telling them they had been “selected” to pick cotton and needed to report to the “nearest plantation”.
Black people in states including Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, New York, New Jersey and Nevada, and in Washington DC and elsewhere, reported receiving the messages. The messages were sent to Black adults and students.
Some of the texts were signed “a Trump supporter”. Trump’s spokesperson, Steven Cheung, said the campaign “has absolutely nothing to do with these text messages”.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) condemned the messages, saying that they “represent an alarming increase in vile and abhorrent rhetoric from racist groups across the country, who now feel emboldened to spread hate and stoke the flames of fear”.
“The unfortunate reality of electing a president who historically has embraced, and at times encouraged hate, is unfolding before our eyes,” the NAACP president and chief executive officer, Derrick Johnson, said in a statement last week.
The FBI said it is contact with the US justice department and other federal authorities on the racist and homophobic messages.
