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I became a Democrat because Democrats stood up for immigrants. It’s that simple — and that personal. But the moral clarity the party once showed on immigration is now murky. And our slide isn’t just bad policy: it’s bad strategy.
At a time when voters seek to distinguish good from bad in politics, I look back on my arrival with hope. When I arrived in Florida at 13, fleeing Venezuela’s authoritarian government, I didn’t speak English. Our asylum was miraculously approved in two months; most aren’t so lucky.
In high school, I watched President Obama launch DACA and DAPA to protect Dreamers and parents of U.S. citizen children and lawful permanent residents. Yet my undocumented friends who lived in Florida their whole lives couldn’t get in-state tuition. The injustice shook me. I realized early that opportunity here often depends on luck, not merit or heart.
With the support of incredible teachers and my community, I graduated as Valedictorian and earned a full ride to Princeton University. While in undergrad, I helped manage my former teacher Johanna López’s campaign for school board in Orange County, a grassroots, immigrant-led movement that elected the first Latina school board member in our county’s history. It was a powerful lesson: when immigrants organize, we don’t just belong — we lead.
After earning a master’s at Oxford, I came home to Orlando. I helped elect US Rep. Maxwell Frost (D), the first Gen Z member of Congress, and worked with the Biden administration to create a humanitarian parole program to allow Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans to enter the US legally with the support of a US-based sponsor and to redesignate temporary protected status (TPS) for Venezuelans.
Today, as Chair of the Orange County Democratic Party, the youngest and only Hispanic local Democratic Party chair in Florida, and as a DNC member, I’m proud that we’ve built a multiracial, multigenerational coalition that flipped three seats blue during the 2024 red wave. We didn’t compromise. We stood for our values and won.
Our success came from year-round organizing, including over five million voter contact attempts and the distribution of more than 500,000 multilingual voter guides.
We made history by electing teacher Anne Douglas, a Black woman and an immigrant, to the school board by more than 18 points. We sent Carlos Guillermo Smith, the son of a Peruvian immigrant, to the Florida Senate. We flipped State House District 45 by electing Leonard Spencer over an incumbent who voted for anti-immigration legislation. We sent Monique Worrell back to the State Attorney’s office after her removal by Ron DeSantis. We elected Kelly Martinez Semrad, the granddaughter of a Mexican farmworker, to the County Commission by roughly 15 points, despite being outspent four to one, according to campaign finance records. We re-elected pro-immigrant champion US Rep. Darren Soto by over 12 points in a district Vice President Harris won by less than four points. And we re-elected Rep. Frost, whose mom is a Cuban-American immigrant, and State Rep. Anna V. Eskamani, the first Iranian-American elected to the Florida Legislature.
