‘Trump Might Deport You:’ BART Viral Video Shows Passenger Racially Berating Iranian Woman
As the country continues to come to terms with the soon-to-occur Donald Trump regime, yet another discriminatory act doused in the controversial rhetoric of the President-elect has gone public.
This time around, a viral video of a confrontation on a BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) train from this past Thursday purportedly shows a female passenger racially insulting another woman after overhearing a private phone conversation that was not in English.
Assyrian American woman who says she was verbally attacked & called a terrorist while on BART is speaking out. She captured it all on camera pic.twitter.com/5naAzwo2aC
— Jodi Hernandez (@JodiHernandezTV) November 12, 2016
Asking to be referred to solely as “Ivet,” the 24-year-old Iranian immigrant spoke to NBC Bay Area and explained that before she began filming, she had been speaking to her father on the phone to request that he pick her up from her destination point. At some point during that conversation, the older individual began referring to her as a “terrorist” and other racially-charged terms related to people of Middle-Eastern descent. Once Ivet hung up, she walked over to her fellow passenger and began filming.
Please be advised, Inquisitr readers, that the following video contains disturbing content.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmlHQlzQkvc
“Go ahead, say it again,” Ivet says at the beginning of the BART viral video.
“Trump might deport you,” the elder woman responds. “You are breaking the law right now.”
An incensed Ivet can hardly believe what she is hearing.
“Oh wow, really? Do you know I’m recording you? [This is] going to go on Facebook.”
“[Let it] go on Facebook,” the verbally aggressive female retorts. “This woman is a stalker from the Middle East, she’s a Middle-Eastern terrorist, and she’s terrorizing citizens like me and she will probably get deported, [along with] these people in the back as well,” she continues, waving her arm toward a group of riders off-screen.
An unseen passenger seems to reacts negatively to the stranger’s comments, but it doesn’t stop her ignorant proclamations.
“Oh, shut the f**k up,” she spews back. “You’re all stalkers. Don’t lie.”
Ivet then reminds the woman that her speech will ultimately end up on social media.
“I don’t give a f***,” the woman responds. “Nobody’s going to watch it on Facebook.”
"This is crazy, I don't feel safe anymore:" Assyrian-American woman verbally attacked on BART. https://t.co/HzDd7yGUsz pic.twitter.com/ciwMXxG1YM
— NBC Bay Area (@nbcbayarea) November 12, 2016
After a few more choice words, the BART passenger requests to make one final crude comment to Ivet.
“What I would like to say right now is [that] this crazy person is stalking people with all these other stalkers, and anybody that’s watching on a Facebook knows the ugly, dirty thing you do every year. You’re playing the dead pool game. And you’re standing here harassing me, and I think you’re an ugly, mean, evil little pig who might get deported, and I pray for you.”
Following the long-winded statement, Ivet clarifies that she is actually American.
“I’m a citizen,” she remarks.
“Oh well, you’re okay, then,” the woman sarcastically fires back. “Lucky you, you’ve made it, just under the wire.”
As repeatedly promised, Ivet shared the moment with Facebook once she got home. Since being posted, the BART viral video has been seen more than 20,000 times. Despite her defiance in the face of ignorance, Ivet admits that the interaction rattled her quite a bit.
“I did nothing to provoke [that] woman,” she expressed to NBC, “[and] she just wouldn’t stop. This just crazy. I don’t feel safe anymore. That’s all I can say. [That, and] I don’t want to take BART anymore.”
Spokespersons for the BART tweeted a response to the video Friday evening.
With civil discourse deteriorating we want to make clear, threats to riders or employees will not be tolerated. Be decent to each other.
— BART (@SFBART) November 12, 2016
Additionally, Ivet feels that President-elect Trump needs to step up and have more of a firm stance against those who are seemingly attacking minorities on his behalf.
“He needs to say something about this,” she said. “He has to stop people, this is just not right. People need to be kind. They need to spread love, not hate.”
As for the verbal assailant in the BART viral video, those who know her told ABC-7 San Francisco that she suffers from mental illness, and that they are concerned for her well-being.
[Featured Image by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images]
