A Texas Democratic congressional candidate named Maureen Galindo has called for turning an immigration detention center into a prison where “Zionists” would be castrated. 

Galindo, a former sex therapist running in Texas’s 35th Congressional District around San Antonio, posted on Instagram last week that if elected, she would “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).” She has also demanded treason charges against politicians linked to Israel, accused “Zionist billionaire Jews” of controlling San Antonio, and invoked “the synagogue of Satan” and “all of the Jews who own Hollywood.”

Galindo won a March primary with 29% of the vote and faces runoff opponent Johnny Garcia next week. Democrats scrambled to contain the damage. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and DCCC Chair Suzan DelBene called her comments “extremely dangerous” and “vile.” Representatives Josh Gottheimer and Jared Moskowitz issued a joint statement promising: “If, for some reason, Maureen Galindo wins…as soon as she is sworn in, we will force a vote to expel her every day she is here.” Every Jewish Democratic member of Congress signed onto a joint condemnation calling her rhetoric a call to “put Jews into concentration camps.”

Even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has not hesitated to use inflammatory language about Israel herself, called Galindo’s statements “bigoted garbage and antisemitism.”

What makes Galindo dangerous is not simply what she says; it is the fusion she represents. Her rhetoric is a cocktail of Soviet-era anti-Zionist propaganda, white supremacist “ZOG” (Zionist Occupied Government) conspiracy theory, far-left “settler-colonialist” framing, and medieval blood libel. She cites Al Jazeera documentaries, posts videos from a former spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist organization, and parrots the debunked Khazar hypothesis — the claim that Jews are European impostors with no historical connection to the Land of Israel. This particular lie has served as propaganda for Israel’s enemies since the mid-20th century and has been demolished repeatedly by genetic and archaeological science.

Galindo insists she is not antisemitic, only anti-Zionist. She accuses “Zionist Jews” of running a cabal that controls the media, the government, law enforcement, and the financial system, and then calls for their imprisonment and castration. Her rhetoric blurs the distinction between antisemitism and anti-Zionism. 

Democrats have accused a Republican-linked super PAC called Lead Left PAC of promoting Galindo. The PAC was founded less than a month ago and has already spent more than $900,000. Democrats allege it is a GOP operation to hand their candidate an easy opponent. Whether that is true or not, the result is the same: explicit calls for the imprisonment and castration of Jews are now standard material in a major American party primary.