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By Jordan King
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Maureen Galindo, a Democratic congressional candidate in Texas, said she would turn an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center into a "prison for American Zionists" if she won.
Galindo, who placed first in the March Democratic primary for Texas' 35th Congressional District, is facing Bexar County Sheriff's Deputy Johnny Garcia in a runoff election this month.
Last week, Galindo said on Instagram: "When Maureen gets into Congress, she'll write legislation so that all Zionism and support of Zionism is undoubtedly Anti-Semitic, since it's Zionists harming the Semites. She'll turn Karnes ICE Detention Center into a prison for American Zionists and former ICE officers for human trafficking. (It will also be a castration processing center for pedophiles which will probably be most of the Zionists)."
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The post has been criticized as antisemitic on both sides of the political aisle, including by Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who called on voters to support Garcia.
"This is absolutely disgusting," Ocasio-Cortez wrote on X. "This bigoted garbage and antisemitism should be nowhere near our politics."
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Galindo Doubles Down
On Monday, Galindo doubled down on her comments, saying in a video: "When I say that I want billionaire Zionists in prison, that does not mean I want Jews in internment camps. So why am I getting a whole bunch of death threats and MAGA insults?"
She added: "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 that you're a danger to humanity and belong in prison, especially if you have the political and economic resources to make that happen."
Galindo said she had been receiving death threats following her Instagram post. She blamed the journalist Michael Karlis, who wrote about her social media comments in the San Antonio Current.
On Tuesday, Karlis promoted his reporting on X, writing on the platform: "TX-35 Democratic candidate Maureen Galindo says she will convert ICE detention center in Karnes County into an internment camp for 'American Zionists.'" His post has since been viewed more than 7.5 million times.
In response, Galindo wrote in an Instagram caption: "There's a connection between these death threats I'm getting and San Antonio Current's inflammatory language."
Rumors of Republican Backers
Several Democrats have alleged that a super PAC with ties to the Republican Party is funding more extreme Democratic candidates in an effort to create weaker general election opponents and help the GOP retain control of the House, The New York Times reported.
Ocasio-Cortez said of Galindo on X: "The donors behind the Republican super PAC funding her should be exposed."
Representative Adam Gray of California, a moderate Democrat who chairs the Blue Dog PAC, told The New York Times that Republicans were "going into Democratic primaries and literally trying to boost the most extreme candidates and oppose the Blue Dog-endorsed candidates that, if they win, are going to beat the Republicans in the general."
Last week, the watchdog group Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission about Lead Left PAC, which has supported Galindo in Texas, Lamont McClure in Pennsylvania and incumbent state Senator John Cavanaugh in Nebraska.
Newsweek has contacted Lead Left PAC for comment via email outside normal working hours.
Campaign Legal Center alleged that Lead Left PAC, which has not yet had to disclose its donors since it was formed in early May, "strategically gamed its reporting schedule to ensure that it does not have to report any information about the sources of its funding until after the various elections it is spending millions of dollars to influence."
The complaint cites an article from Punchbowl News, the political outlet reporting that Lead Left's website featured now-deleted metadata from the Republican fundraising platform WinRed.
Update 9.35 a.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.
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