CHICAGO – Federal and state investigations are underway as racist and offensive text messages circulate across the country targeting black Americans. The messages, originating from unknown numbers, started appearing on mobile phones after election day.

Illinois officials confirm that state residents, including students, are among those who received the texts. The messages contain hateful language and alarming references to slavery, plantations and deadlines to be in certain locations.

“Here in the state of Illinois, we received reports from a school district,” said Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul. “We are against such hateful rhetoric. We will investigate it and, should it rise to any crime, we will act accordingly to hold those responsible.”

Raoul says the school district that reported the harmful messages is in Bloomingdale, Illinois, and shares that the texts are similar to what residents in other states have received.

As of Wednesday, reports indicate that messages have reached residents in New York, Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana, Ohio and more.

“Absolutely horrifying,” said VS Subrahmanian, professor of computer science, Northwestern University.

Subrahmanian says that at this point it’s too early to say for sure, “however, given that all of these messages were received at or around the same time and that they all have a common theme, it would tends to suspect that the source is a common source’.

The Louisiana Attorney General’s Cyber ​​Unit reported that some of the messages were traced to a virtual private network (VPN) located in Poland, although federal authorities have not yet confirmed that connection.

As for how the residents were targeted, Subrahmanian says their information likely came from a data breach.

“Virtually every industry sector that holds information about individuals has been hacked. And it would be suspected in many cases to have been hacked by similar threat actors,” Subrahmanian said.

That includes health records, for example, “which typically include racial information,” Subrahmanian added.

He recommends screenshots like these, but encourages recipients not to interact with the sender.

“I wish carriers would give us more reporting options like this is spam and this is hate mail. They are not the same thing and should not be treated in the same way,” Subrahmanian said.

In Illinois, the Attorney General’s Office for Civil Rights protects the civil rights of all residents.

“Hate has no place in the state of Illinois. Period,” Raoul said.

Raoul encourages anyone who receives these messages to report them to local law enforcement, the Help Stop the Hate hotline at (877) 458-HATE, or the Illinois Attorney General. Office of Civil Rights.