BOSTON (WHDH) - Boston City Councilor Julia Mejia shared a message of hate she received on her voicemail and said she has a message of her own for the person who sent it.
“Let me tell you something you bigot, you fascist, you criminal,” said a male voice on Mejia’s voicemail.
Mejia says she received the threatening four-and-a-half minute message last week.
The man can be heard telling her to “go back to where you came from.”
“It’s very disheartening and I think the climate that we have in this country right now has made it acceptable for people to spew out hate,” Mejia told 7NEWS.
Despite her feelings, Boston’s first Latina councilor is turning the difficult situation into an opportunity — issuing a message of her own.
“I am not going anywhere. I am a U.S. citizen, you cannot take me out of here. I am here to serve. I’m not going anywhere. Try it and we will see,” she said.
Mejia decided to make the voicemail public and posted it online alongside photos of her family.
Her mother, who is now a U.S. citizen, was undocumented when she arrived from the Dominican Republic.
“You lady, are a criminal and by the way, how much more do you want to leech off us, the taxpayers,” the voicemail continues on. “Apples don’t fall far from the tree. Your mother was a criminal too for coming over here illegally. You have no respect for our laws.”
The hate-filled message goes on to call the councilwoman a racist, a hater and threatens to call President Donald Trump’s office.
Mejia said this message is all too familiar and a call like this speaks volumes to the importance of having diversity in office.
“If this is something that is being said to me as an elected official, just imagine what other people who feel voiceless here in the city of Boston, and not just immigrants but all marginalized communities,” she said.
The anonymous man continued to say, “Send ICE into Boston and have these people, you should be the first attested, you should be put in handcuffs and deported.”
Despite the voicemail, Mejia says that she will not be intimidated by these threats.
“This was an opportunity to bring people in, especially in Boston. There is so much racial tension here and these are the sort of incidents that give us an opportunity to shed light but also do it in a way to make people understand what it is on the other side,” she said.
Mejia told 7NEWS that some of her colleagues have also received threatening voicemails directed at her. One asked her to prove her citizenship.
Boston police say they are monitoring the situation.
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