Anti-immigrant fliers that appear to be linked to a white-supremacist group have been found in at least two Lake County suburbs, police said Tuesday.
Police in Wauconda received two calls about fliers while police here in Mundelein got at least three. So far, they’ve been found in at least four neighborhoods. Police say they began getting calls about the fliers over the weekend.
"Just by the fact that people called the police about it," said Heather Cognac of the Wauconda Police Department, "I would say that they were disturbed. It’s not typical for this area."
In each case a sandwich bag weighted with a few stones was tossed on resident’s driveways.
Inside, the flier reads: “Keep America American.”
Some were outraged.
"To find out that Nazis have been in my neighborhood spreading around their hatred was just not what I wanted to see on Sunday," one resident only identified as Carla said.
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At Harrison and Dorchester in Mundelein NBC 5 found at least a half dozen littering the neighborhood.
Eric Perez, a Marine Corps veteran, found one on his driveway Sunday afternoon.
“(I) didn’t know if it was a pro-American thing because of my flags or if it was a direct target towards me because of my last name," he said.
The flier calls for the reporting of illegal immigrants to Homeland Security and advertises a website for a Texas-based white-supremacist group known as Patriot Front.
“Especially if kids see that, it just spreads hatred and it shouldn’t be tolerated," said Elias Mendoza. "It’s no good."
The Southern Poverty Law Center describes Patriot Front as a neo-Nazi organization and the Anti-Defamation League says the group espouses racism and intolerance under the guise of preserving the “ethnic and cultural origins" of their European ancestors.
In a statement Mundelein’s mayor says:
"This organization is spewing hate and fear upon our immigrant population," said Mundelein's Mayor Steve Lentz in a statement. "This type of behavior is intolerable in our community."
"If these people put in as much passion to doing something actually productive like lending a helping hand to their neighbor instead of pointing out their differences how much better our world would be," Carla said.
Police say while the group’s speech is protected, the un-permitted distribution of the fliers violates municipal ordinances. For that reason they say they’d like to speak with whoever is doing it.
