Laura Pinho, a Los Angeles teacher who supervises a Students for Justice in Palestine high school chapter, said she married a man from Gaza so he could obtain U.S. citizenship.
Pinho, 51, a dance teacher at Canoga Park Senior High, part of the Los Angeles Unified School District, made the remarks during a June 16 CodePink webinar titled “Challenging Zionism in Schools,” after Marcy Winograd, a teachers-union activist and CodePink Congress coordinator, congratulated Pinho on her marriage.
“Seeing what has happened to the Palestinian people and the complete erasure of their culture, their land, their rights—all of it—has led me to believe that any action we take, doesn’t matter what the action is, it’s in the right direction if it’s for Palestinian rights and freedoms,” Pinho responded.
She added that “it was symbolic of me to offer—you know, I have powers as an American citizen.
“I have a passport that I was just born with,” she said. “How can I live in this world if I don’t make every effort to equalize the playing field in whatever way that I can? All personal feelings aside, that, for me, was the motivating issue.”
According to Utah County marriage records, Pinho married Salem Abu Amra on April 5 in a remote ceremony conducted under Utah’s online marriage system. It is unclear whether Abu Amra has entered the United States.
In March 2025, Pinho launched a GoFundMe campaign for Abu Amra that has raised more than $12,000. In the fundraiser, she described him as a businessman living in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza and “the primary caregiver for his family of five, who provides for his aging parents.”
“He contacted me within a week of my donation,” she wrote. “I keep in regular contact with him now and will wire whatever funds collected here to his bank account.”
The fundraiser also identifies Pinho as a grant writer for A Just Peace, a United Methodist Church-funded organization that advocates for Palestinians.
The New York Post reported that Pinho has shared antisemitic content on social media, including a post with conspiracy theories calling Jews “Satanic bankers” and “impostors,” and a post agreeing with podcaster Candace Owens’s statement that “we are ruled by Satanic pedophiles who work for Israel.”
Eitan Fischberger, a Middle East analyst, called Abu Amra a “radical jihadist,” pointing to his Facebook account that contains images glorifying violence.
“The Department of Homeland Security should act on this immediately,” he wrote.
