A swastika mowed into a front lawn in the tiny village of Alhambra, Illinois, prompted a hate crime investigation by Madison County authorities this week, local media reported, in the latest in a series of disturbing incidents where Jews have been the target across the United States.

Jordan Payne, who has lived in the 700-person village since 1987, discovered the giant Nazi emblem while out walking over the weekend.

He told First Alert 4 that he was “very surprised to see Nazi insignia carved into the lawn with a mower.”“It’s a slap in the face, a scar on our village,” Payne said.

The property owner, construction manager Mike Eaton, denied involvement and said he cut the grass as soon as neighbors alerted him to the existence of the symbol.

Alhambra’s city attorney and local police were determining whether the act met the legal threshold for a hate crime. Nearby residents expressed shock; one told St. Louis-based Fox 2, “We don’t want to see this kind of hate in our town.”

A swastika mowed into the grass of a lawn in Alhambra is now at the center of an investigation and drawing concern from advocates across the St. Louis region. https://t.co/sG5Zndathl

— KMOV (@KMOV) June 3, 2025

Helen Turner, the director of education at the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum, said that the vandalism fits a wider pattern.

“History doesn’t repeat itself, it rhymes,” she told First Alert 4, warning that antisemitic rhetoric often “quickly escalates into violence.”

National climate of hate

The Illinois case emerged just days after an Egyptian national wielding a makeshift flamethrower wounded at least 12 people at a pro-Israel rally in Boulder, Colorado.

Federal prosecutors said the suspect shouted “free Palestine” and sought to “kill all Zionist people.”

The Anti-Defamation League’s 2024 audit recorded 8,873 antisemitic incidents nationwide, the highest number since the organization began tracking this in 1979. 

Illinois alone saw a 74% jump between 2022 and 2023, with 211 cases ranging from harassment to assault.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) also denounced the lawn vandalism, calling the swastika “a symbol of hate and genocide that has no place in a civilized society.”

CAIR-Chicago executive director Ahmed Rehab urged authorities “to take the promotion of bigotry seriously and to address it whenever and wherever it occurs.”

CAIR spokesperson Ibrahim Hooper said the organization “stands in solidarity with all those challenging antisemitism, systemic anti-black racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, white supremacy, and all other forms of bigotry.”

‘We will prosecute’

Turner stressed the need for swift legal action. “It typically begins with words, but it very quickly escalates into violence. The only counter to that is for our society to say, ‘These actions have no place here. We will prosecute.’”

As Pride Month began on June 1, local LGBTQ+ advocates noted parallels between rising antisemitism and a documented 80 % spike in anti-LGBTQ+ threats since 2023, according to a new GLAAD report.

For now, investigators in Alhambra were still piecing together how the swastika came to be on the lawn.

Payne said that the hateful emblem did not reflect his hometown’s values: “This isn’t who we are.”