The FBI is investigating post-election text threats sent to Latino, LGBTQ people

More than a week after racist text messages threatening Black people with enslavement were sent by anonymous numbers to recipients across the country, similar threats have been sent to people in Latino and LGBTQ+ communities, according to the FBI.

“Some recipients reported being told they were selected for deportation or to report to a reeducation camp,” the agency said in a statement Friday, adding that some threats were sent by email as well.

It was not immediately clear how many messages were sent by the anonymous users, but thousands more messages - and the numbers sending them - were blocked by wireless carriers once they were made aware of the situation, according to Nick Ludlum, senior vice president of CTIA, a trade group for the U.S. wireless communications industry.

“Providers also put protections in place to prevent these threatening messages from going through moving forward,” Ludlum said.

The latest round of hate messages follows a spate of texts sent to Black people, many of them teens and young adults, after the Nov. 5 election. Some of the messages that targeted Black students at universities claimed they were sent by a supporter of President-elect Donald Trump or from “the Trump administration,” according to screenshots shared on social media and local news.

A Trump campaign spokesperson previously stated the campaign had “absolutely nothing to do” with the post-Election Day messages.

The messages targeting Latino people seemed similarly skewed toward young adults and college students, according to Juan Proaño, CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens, a civil rights organization. Proaño told The Washington Post that many of the text messages flagged to LULAC were sent to students in California and may have been targeting people enrolled in the University of California system.

Proaño said that while it isn’t out of the ordinary for a nefarious sender to purchase a list with email addresses or phone numbers, the effort targeting Latino people appears to be growing more sophisticated, with variations on the message and personalization such as the recipient’s first name and last initial.

Other messages included detailed information alerting the recipient of an imminent roundup by immigration agents.

“Our expectation is that we’re going to see more of this as we get closer to Jan. 20,” Proaño said, referring to the date of Trump’s inauguration.

Political texts increased during the campaign season, powered by political consultants who bought detailed lists of types of voters from data brokers, who are federally unregulated and combine phone numbers with demographic information, voting habits, and data gleaned from web browsing. The spammers active in the past two weeks might have inherited such lists from campaign contractors or paid for them directly.

The FBI did not immediately clarify when the latest round of messages began to appear or how recipients were identified, but their emergence comes as some Latino and LGBTQ+ groups express growing fears over their rights and safety in a second Trump term. Trump and his allies leaned into anti-trans rhetoric for the closing message of his campaign, while Trump has for years disparaged Latino immigrants as part of his core message about “saving” America.

Calls to LGBTQ+ crisis lines surged following Trump’s Election Day victory, with callers expressing feelings of isolation, as wells as fears that they would lose access to gender-affirming health care or experience physical violence because of their gender or sexual identity.

The Trevor Project, a nonprofit focused on support and suicide prevention among LGBTQ+ youths, said a third of its crisis calls immediately before and after Election Day were from LGBTQ+ youths who are also racial and ethnic minorities.

The text threats sent to LGBTQ+ people referencing a “reeducation camp” were an apparent nod to conversion therapy, the discredited practice of trying to change a person’s sexual orientation or identity through counseling, which some religious conservatives have embraced.

More than 20 states and the District of Columbia restrict mental health counseling that attempts to change a young person’s gender identity or sexual orientation, while major pediatric and heath organizations have published studies indicating the practice is unethical and even likely to increase suicidal ideation in LGBTQ youths.

The Trevor Project’s Janson Wu called the news of the text messages targeting LGBTQ+ people and other marginalized groups “concerning.”

“No one should have to receive unwanted harassment or misinformation on their personal devices simply because of who they are,” Wu, the organization’s senior director of advocacy and government affairs, said in a statement to The Post. “To any LGBTQ+ young person who feels afraid or overwhelmed by this news, or about the impact of the 2024 elections more broadly, please remember that you are not alone.”

Wu said the Trevor Project has round-the-clock support available for any young LGBTQ+ person and noted that “there are million and millions of people across the country who support the rights of LGBTQ+ people to live freely, and safely, exactly as we are.”

Who sent the messages, how the recipients’ information was obtained and what motivated the mass texts remain unclear. At least some of the messages may have been sent using TextNow, an app that allows users to make free internet-based calls and text messages, the company confirmed.

“TextNow has uncovered that one or more of our accounts may have been used to send text messages in violation of our terms of service,” a spokesperson for the company said in an email Monday, adding that once the company was aware of the situation, its trust and safety team acted quickly and disabled the related accounts in less than an hour.

“As part of our investigation into these messages, we learned they have been sent through multiple carriers across the U.S., and we are working with partners and law enforcement cooperatively to investigate this attack,” the company said.

By law, automated texts are banned without prior consent of the recipient, according to the Federal Communications Commission, although such regulations have not eliminated spam messages entirely.

The FCC, which regulates spam texts and robocalls, did not respond to a request for comment Monday. Verizon did not respond to emailed questions, while AT&T, the other top wireless carrier, referred questions to CTIA.