Antisemitic and white separatist flyers were distributed in Colleyville, Texas, over the weekend, more than a month after four people were held hostage in one of the city's synagogues.
The Colleyville Police Department said officials were "aware of antisemitic and white separatist materials distributed in clear sandwich bags to driveways around the city overnight" Saturday.
The department was working with the FBI and investigating the incident as a hate crime, police said in a statement posted to Facebook.
“Does not appear to only be targeting Colleyville. Flyers have shown up in San Francisco, Miami, and Denver,” the department said, linking to an NBC News article from January.
"I am saddened that individuals chose to bring this intolerance to Colleyville," Colleyville Mayor Richard Newton said in a statement. "These viewpoints do not reflect those I find in our community members."
"The city unequivocally denounces hate in any form — it has no place in our city," Newton said.
Four people, including a rabbi, were taken hostage Jan. 15 at Congregation Beth Israel, a Reform synagogue in Colleyville, which is about 30 miles northwest of Dallas.
The hostages were being held by a man demanding the release of a federal prisoner being held in North Texas who was convicted in 2010 of attempted murder in a terrorism-related case, officials said.
They were all released safely, and the man who was holding them died.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, which tracks hate crimes, the flyers, usually placed in plastic baggies and weighed down with rocks, have been thrown on doorsteps in cities and towns all over the country starting in December. The flyers have been distributed in 17 different states, a spokeswoman for the ADL said Wednesday.
The ADL described flyers left outside homes in some cities as "antisemitic propaganda that claimed, 'Every single aspect of the COVID agenda is Jewish' and others as "antisemitic propaganda that claimed, 'Every single aspect of the Biden administration is Jewish.'"
In Santa Monica, California, similar flyers were found at four elementary schools, according to the ADL.
Many of the flyers, according to the ADL, have been distributed by “individuals associated with the Goyim Defense League.”
The Goyim Defense League is a "loose network" of people connected by their "virulent antisemitism," according to the ADL. It is led by five or six organizers and has dozens of supporters and thousands of online followers.
Listed on the paper were government officials who have played parts in managing the coronavirus pandemic and who the flyers say are Jewish, according to images shared with NBC News.
