Local News

‘Bush-league trolling’: Harris supporters receive fake campaign mailers about hosting migrants

The postcards were apparently sent to Shrewsbury residents who had displayed Harris/Walz yard signs.

October 31, 2024

2 minutes to read

Some supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris in Shrewsbury recently received mysterious postcards in the mail thanking them for their support and telling them to prepare to host migrant families.

The mailers were apparently sent to residents who had displayed Harris/Walz yard signs in an attempt to confuse or intimidate them.

“We are so appreciative of you putting out a yard sign. But now we need your continued help,” the cards read.

Some spaces were left blank and later filled in with handwriting. One resident posted an image of a card on Reddit. It was filled out to tell the recipient that they would start hosting a family of four from Belize on Nov. 3, two days before Election Day.

Got This Lovely Card In The Mail Today, Everyone!
byu/drumsimon inmassachusetts

Another resident showed an NBC10 Boston reporter a card that informed them they would be hosting a family of two from Nicaragua.

Former President Donald Trump’s campaign has centered heavily on immigration, stoking fears about migrants coming into the country to rape, murder, and steal jobs from residents. Trump has called them “animals” who are ruining the “fabric” of the country.

There has been a surge in migrants heading to Massachusetts, contributing to a shelter crisis that Gov. Maura Healey’s administration has worked for more than a year to handle.

Thomas Whalen, a professor of social sciences at Boston University, said that the Shrewsbury mailers were a “ham-handed attempt to undermine our democratic process” and proof of a rising “fascist authoritarianism” in the U.S.

“City on a Hill? More like we’re in a political valley of despair with this kind of racist scapegoating,” Whalen told Boston.com in an email Thursday.

To Alexander Theodoridis, a political science professor at UMass Amherst, the Shrewsbury mailers appear to be an “exercise in bush-league trolling” on the eve of the election.

“Last-minute dirty tricks like this are, sadly, not uncommon in American politics, especially in close races. Campaigns and associated groups will sometimes use them to confuse voters and suppress turnout among an opponent’s supporters,” he told Boston.com in an email Thursday.

Theodoridis compared this situation to incidents in some swing states where Harris supporters are receiving robocalls from Republican-aligned groups encouraging them to vote for Jill Stein instead.

Harris is expected to win deep-blue Massachusetts easily. In 2020, President Biden won 65.6% of votes in the state, compared to Trump’s 32.1%. The final vote tally in Shrewsbury in particular reflected an almost identical margin of victory for Biden.

Polling shows that voters both nationally and in Massachusetts see immigration as an important issue. However, 57% of Massachusetts residents support the state’s “right to shelter” law, according to a recent UMass/WCVB poll.

“Now, that doesn’t mean they would welcome migrants into their homes, but it suggests they are open to having these newcomers in their communities and want them to receive the support needed to assimilate and thrive,” Theodoridis said.

Whalen said he was concerned that this could be construed as an illegal violation of the Civil Rights Act. Those behind the mailers are “using the federal postal system as a way of disseminating false and misleading propaganda,” he said.

In a statement, a U.S. Postal Service spokesperson said the mailers don’t constitute a “threat.”

“It is illegal to mail someone a postcard or letter that contains text that is threatening,” the statement said. “While this is clearly misinformation, it falls short of meeting the threshold of a threat.”