After pledging to convert an ICE detention center into a prison for Zionists, Texas’s 35th congressional district Democratic primary candidate Maureen Galindo faced backlash from critics within her party and assured that her position did not mean putting all Jews into internment camps.
In a Thursday social media post, Galindo promised to write legislation that proclaimed Zionism antisemitic, and promised to turn the Karnes County Immigration Processing Center into a prison for “American Zionists and former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.”
“It will also be a castration processing center for pedophiles, which will probably be most of the Zionists,” Galindo added.
She explained in the same Instagram post that ICE officers and Zionists would be imprisoned because they controlled human trafficking in South Texas, and rejected any claims of antisemitism against her because Zionists were fake Jews committing against the indigenous Jews, “the Semites.”
“[Democratic primary candidate] Johnny Garcia is paid by Zionist terrorism and trafficking: Israel, ICE, and Prison industry profits,” Galindo said of her election opponent. “Johnny Garcia is being paid to put Jews and Mexicans in concentration camps via Zionist trafficking networks.”
Bexar County Sheriff’s Deputy Garcia responded in a video statement on Tuesday, saying that comments about jailing based on their beliefs and targeting Jewish community members had no place in the Democratic Party. He accused a Republican PAC of funding Galindo and called on Republicans to take ownership of her comments.
“We should be bringing people together, not spreading hate, division, or dangerous rhetoric that pushes people away from our party and our communities,” said Garcia.
Galindo's comments condemned as antisemitic
Democrat congresspeople, including Texas representative Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, slammed Galindo for her comments, and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Suzan DelBene released a joint statement condemning her and blaming Republicans for propping her up.
“House Republican leadership must immediately cease propping up this antisemitic candidacy, pull spending in the race, and forcefully condemn these comments. This vile language by her is disqualifying and has no place in American politics, and certainly not in the Democratic Party,” Jeffries and DelBene said on Tuesday.
“To embrace and uplift a fringe candidate with antisemitic – and extremely dangerous – rhetoric and views in order to win an election is beyond the pale. Texans will not be fooled and will reject her at the ballot box next week,” they added.
New Jersey Congressman Josh Gottheimer said on X/Twitter on Tuesday that her remarks came “straight out of the Nazi playbook,” and New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called the comments “bigoted garbage.”
Galindo defends her statements
Galindo defended her statements in a Tuesday video, arguing that wanting to put “billionaire Zionists” in prison was not the same as proposing putting all Jews in internment camps. She explained that Jews were distinct from Zionists, who wanted to create “white supremacist religion [sic] states.”
“I don’t care what religion you are. If you are a Zionist, meaning that you believe that you are just entitled to land, or someone’s just entitled to land based off of religious beliefs and that you’ll kill all of the Semites for it, then yeah, I think you’re a danger to humanity and belong in prison,” said Galindo.
The Democratic primary candidate, who faces down her opponent in a runoff election on May 26, has expressed conspiracy theories about Zionist control of ICE, human trafficking, and San Antonio for weeks.
On Tuesday, she also said that a vote for Garcia was a vote for a “continued Zionist takeover of San Antonio AI Surveillance Prison state.” She also suggested that Garcia should be tried for treason because he supposedly “took money from Israel.”
ICE is trained by the IDF, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was based in Israel, Galindo said in a Texas Public Radio interview, and she claimed that Israel could conduct a genocide in the US and take over the country.
“They run the Epstein networks, and they control DHS, because that was the whole point of DHS and ICE – for the Israelis to occupy America with a domestic military,” the politician said in a May 8 Instagram post.
Journalists contacting the politician about her remarks were part of a “billionaire Zionist” media network that also controlled drug and weapon trafficking in Texas, she said on May 12.
Galindo has defended herself from accusations of antisemitism by repeatedly claiming that Zionist Jews were not real Jews. Zionists are European colonizers, according to Galindo, in contrast to the “indigenous people to the Middle East and Northern Africa Region,” whom she dubbed Semites.
Consequently, Zionism was supposedly the real antisemitism, she said in a Thursday social media post, gushing about the support she was receiving over such comments.