It’s a classic photo op: A candidate for office and their spouse cast their votes, side by side, on Election Day. But for Delia Ramirez and Boris Hernández, only Ramirez — then an Illinois state representative, and now the newly-elected U.S. congresswoman representing Illinois’ 3rd District — was legally able to vote. She was born in the United States after her mother, pregnant with Ramirez, nearly drowned crossing the Rio Grande en route from Guatemala to Chicago. Hernández, who immigrated to the States from Guatemala at 14 years old, isn’t eligible to vote due to his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status. So while at the polls on the 2022 midterm election day, Hernández could only watch. He represents who Ramirez says she fights for: people with the smallest voices in the U.S. system.
When the 39-year-old Ramirez arrives in Washington, D.C. in January 2023, she’ll do so as the first Latina ever sent to Congress representing the Midwest — and the first person ever to represent Illinois’s 3rd Congressional District, which was newly drawn in October 2021 to encompass parts of Chicago as well as surrounding suburbs.
