A woman is questioning whether any federal laws were broken when she received a targeted postcard playing on anti-immigrant fears.
A Massachusetts resident is angry after receiving a fraudulent campaign postcard in the mail.
The Shrewsbury woman says it arrived after she put a sign supporting Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in front of her home.
"I put a lawn sign in my front yard," said the woman, who did not want to be identified. "I don't think I should be subjected to these fraudulent mailers."
The 50-year-old never imagined she would be subjected to a political dirty trick after putting up the sign.
"It really creeped me out," she said.
She was dismayed when the mail arrived this week and she received the postcard.
It purports to be from the Harris campaign, thanking her for putting up a sign, and alerting her a family from Nicaragua would be moving into her home.
"That's when I realized it was an obvious attempt to try to either scare me or rage bait me and make me upset," she said.
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Suffolk University Political Science Professor Rachael Cobb, an expert in political participation, says this is designed to confuse people, play into the anti-immigrant wave of this election season, and make voters uneasy enough that they may decide to not vote.
"It's absolutely a scare tactic," said Cobb. "It is a tactic that is used by groups to make people uncomfortable, to heighten and raise the tension level, do things to lower people's confidence in the kind of information they are receiving."
Another Shrewsbury resident received a similar postcard in the mail, except hers said she'd have a family of five from Guatemala moving in.
The woman we spoke with says she's already reached out to the Shrewsbury Democratic Town Committee, which told her to file a police report. She was also advised to report it to the post office in case any federal mail laws may have been broken.
"It makes me angry," she said. "But if the takeaway is 'Don't put up a lawn sign in support of a political candidate,' I feel the exact opposite. Next time there's an election, I'll put up three signs in my yard."
NBC10 Boston has reached out to the Harris and Donald Trump campaigns to see if they have any comment on the mailer, but so far, there has been no response.
The mailer was postmarked in Boston, but did not include any return address or phone number.
