A Democratic congressional hopeful in Texas is under intense fire from across the political spectrum after publicly fantasizing about turning a federal immigration detention facility into a prison camp for American Zionists.
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According to The Post Millennial, Maureen Galindo, a housing activist and sex therapist running in Texass newly redrawn 35th Congressional District, used her Instagram account to declare that she would convert the Karnes ICE Detention Center into a prison for American Zionists and former ICE officers for human trafficking. In the same post, she escalated her rhetoric further, writing, It will also be a castration processing center for pedophiles, which will probably be most of the Zionists, referring to herself in the third person as she laid out her vision for the facility.
Galindo faces Johnny Garcia, a former hostage negotiator and public information officer for the Bexar County Sheriffs Office, in a May 26 Democratic primary runoff, but her comments have already drawn sharp condemnation from fellow Democrats and Jewish organizations. The New York Times, hardly a conservative outlet, went so far as to urge voters not to support her in the runoff against Garcia, underscoring how extreme her rhetoric has become even by the standards of todays increasingly radicalized Democratic Party.
On Instagram, Galindo accused Garcia of wanting Jews and Mexicans in warehouses, a smear that plays into the lefts habit of casually weaponizing accusations of racism and bigotry against political opponents. She also claimed that billionaire Zionists control trafficking networks in San Antonio and South Texas, a conspiracy-laden charge that echoes some of the oldest antisemitic tropes about Jewish financial and social power.
In another post, Galindo wrote in all caps, WE MUST END ZIONISM TO PROTECT JEWS AND SEMITES & ALL OTHER VICTIMS OF THE ISRAEL AND EPSTEIN NETWORK OF TERROR. GLOBAL TERRORISM PAID FOR WITH OUR AMERICAN TAXPAYER MONEY. By linking Israel, Zionism, and the Epstein scandal into a single network of terror, she fused fringe internet conspiracy theories with the hard-lefts increasingly open hostility toward the Jewish state.
Galindo has also targeted Caterpillar, a frequent punching bag for anti-Israel activists who accuse the company of supplying equipment used by the Israeli military. She accused Caterpillar and the Holt family, owners of Holt Caterpillar and the San Antonio Spurs, of profiting from machinery she claimed is deployed against Palestinians, again casting private enterprise and Israel as intertwined villains.
Her social media feed has extended these accusations to domestic law enforcement and surveillance technology, claiming that Flock safety cameras are Israeli spyware and alleging that Israel controls the Department of Homeland Security and ICE. She further asserted that ICE is a terrorist organization under DHS based in Tel Aviv Israel, and claimed it is run by Proud Boys and IDF soldiers, a statement that collapses American law enforcement, right-wing groups, and the Israeli military into a single imagined enemy.
Galindo has repeatedly insisted that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, arguing that "Zionist Jews" are not real Jews, a distinction widely rejected by mainstream Jewish groups as a semantic cover for bigotry. Yet she has simultaneously described Zionist Jews as genocidal European colonizer freaks and claimed Zionists are not real Jews, and in another post appeared to advocate making Zionism itself, rather than anti-Zionism, an antisemitic crime against humanity, while also lashing out at Christian Zionists.
After the backlash intensified, Galindo attempted to walk back some of her rhetoric, saying that calling for billionaire Zionists to be imprisoned did not mean she supported putting all Jews in internment camps. During an appearance on Texas Public Radio last week, she denied being antisemitic while doubling down on her hostility toward Zionist Jews, insisting that her target is a political ideology rather than a religious or ethnic group.
Im not antisemitic. In fact, my last serious relationship was with a Jewish man, Galindo said, according to The Times of Israel. Im against Zionist Jews. When I said that the Jews who own Hollywood are doing this, do all Jews own Hollywood? No. The Zionist Jews do. The Zionist Jews own our media, our banks, and all of our politicians.
Her remarks have prompted rare bipartisan condemnation, though notably from Democrats who themselves often flirt with anti-Israel rhetoric when it suits their base. This antisemitic rhetoric has no place in our politics, Texas State Rep. James Talarico, a Democratic candidate for US Senate, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, adding, We need leadership in both parties willing to stand up and call out hate wherever it rears its ugly head, and his campaign confirmed he would not campaign for Galindo if she wins the nomination.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) urged Democratic leaders to publicly denounce Galindos comments, warning on X, First current political candidate suggests concentration camps for American Jews. This should be national news! Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) likewise wrote on X that Galindo should never hold public office, signaling that even within a party increasingly tolerant of anti-Israel activism, there are still lines that some Democrats are unwilling to cross.
Even Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has frequently been accused of trafficking in anti-Israel and antisemitic tropes herself, felt compelled to distance the party from Galindos rhetoric. She condemned the candidate on X, writing, "This is absolutely disgusting. This bigoted garbage and antisemitism should be nowhere near our politics," and encouraged her followers to support Garcia, a move that underscores how toxic Galindos statements have become even among progressives who routinely criticize Israel.
For conservatives, the episode highlights a deeper problem inside the modern Democratic Party, where anti-Zionism has increasingly served as a socially acceptable mask for old-fashioned antisemitism, and where radical activists feel emboldened to call for prisons and castration processing centers for their ideological enemies. Whether Democratic leaders treat Galindo as an outlier or as a symptom of a broader ideological drift will say much about how seriously they take the rising tide of antisemitism on the leftand whether voters in Texass 35th District are prepared to reward or reject such extremism at the ballot box.
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