Texas Dem Candidate Faces Backlash Over Pledge to Jail ‘American Zionists’ in ICE Center

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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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