New Faces in Congress is a brand new diary series meant to highlight our new and diverse members of Congress in the Democratic Party. These 36 House freshmen range from political neophytes to seasoned legislative veterans. The series will run every Sunday morning, bright and early.
Last week, the New Faces in Congress series continued with a profile on Rep. Kevin Mullin of California’s 15th district. If you missed it, feel free to click on this link to read all about him!
The next entry in this series is about a new member of Congress that has joined the Squad, helping increase its total to nine members. Before joining Congress, she was elected to the Illinois Assembly, quickly making her name as an outspoken progressive voice. An ally of Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, she is known for fighting for underserved communities like the neighborhoods she represents.
When the lines were drawn for Illinois for 2020 redistricting, the “earmuffs” district was split in half, meaning that there were two majority Latinx districts in the Chicago area. The 3rd district shifted from a majority white area southwest of Chicago to the northwestern part of the city. The Democratic primary, which is tantamount to election in Chicago, was a resounding victory for her.
Today, the spotlight is on Rep. Delia Ramirez!
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Delia Ramirez (Illinois-3)
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Biography
Rep. Delia Ramirez has a campaign website that wouldn’t always work for me. Luckily, she also posted a biography on her Congressional page.
The daughter of working-class Guatemalan immigrants, Congresswoman Delia Ramirez is an accomplished legislator, social service director, community leader, and coalition builder who has dedicated her life and career advocating for working families. Delia Ramirez was born in the Belmont Cragin community in Chicago. Her family moved to Humboldt Park at the age of one, when her parents found a subsidized apartment above a church that they could finally afford.
Delia’s commitment to community and working families is shaped by her lived experience. Her mother crossed the border while pregnant with Delia and worked multiple low-wage jobs to give her children a fighting chance to escape poverty. Delia’s father worked two jobs and alternated switched shifts with her Mom so that they could care for their children. Delia witnessed firsthand how important social services were, as she watched neighbors come to her church for housing assistance, food and services for the undocumented. She saw the heartbreaking financial crises that her parents and many others in her community shouldered, hoping to provide a better life for their children.
These experiences ignited a fire that propelled her to fight for the rights of all working families struggling to survive, whether it be housing justice, fully funding public schools, women’s reproductive rights, or Medicare for all. She spent the next 18 years as a non-profit leader at the Center for Changing Lives, Common Cause and Community Renewal Society, and board chair for both the Latin United Community Housing Association (LUCHA) and Logan Square Neighborhood Association (LSNA), fighting for affordable housing, quality education and campaign finance reform.
In 2018, her community drafted Delia to run for State Representative of the 4th House District of Illinois. In the Illinois General Assembly, she successfully passed legislation expanding Medicaid coverage to IL senior citizens regardless of immigration status, securing over 450 million to build affordable housing, protecting abortion rights, and creating an elected school board in the City of Chicago. She co-founded the Illinois House Progressive Caucus and served as Assistant Majority Leader.
Delia is a graduate of Northeastern Illinois University and lives in Chicago with her husband Boris and their golden retrievers Lola and Milo.
Rep. Delia Ramirez is the first Latina elected to Congress from the Midwest region.
Ballotpedia adds a little bit more about her background that her official biography missed, particularly about her education.
Delia Ramirez was born and lives in Chicago, Illinois.[1] Ramirez earned a B.A. in justice studies from Northeastern Illinois University. Her career experience includes working as a social services administrator, a community organizer, and a policy advocate.[2] Ramirez co-founded Justice for Our Neighbors (JFON), and has served as the executive director of Center for Changing Lives and the board chair of the Latin United Community Housing Association (LUCHA) and Logan Square Neighborhood Association (LSNA).[1][2][3]
This introductory ad from Rep. Delia Ramirez’s campaign highlights some of the legislative priorities and the biography she came to Congress with. It boils down her platform in an easy to digest :30, so it is worth the view if you truly want to know what is important to her.
Ramirez will likely use her background in serving working families and in community organizing to shift legislation in a more progressive direction. She will have to learn to work in a minority though, as she worked in a supermajority in the state of Illinois.
Notable Media Headlines
Any member of the Squad is more likely to make media headlines, even as a freshman in Congress. Rep. Delia Ramirez has been in the spotlight twice this year nationally. There are also several articles and news clippings about her local efforts as well.
Ramirez gave the Working Families Party response to the State of the Union address in 2023. In it, she highlighted the priorities that the Squad and close allies had in the year 2023. This speech isn’t meant to be a rebuke of POTUS Biden, but a complement to his State of the Union speech. Before giving her speech, Rep. Delia Ramirez was profiled by the Nation.
The more substantive response will come from newly elected US Representative Delia Catalina Ramirez, an Illinois Democrat who since her election last year has established herself as one of the most thoughtful and engaged members of the current Congress. Her message, honed during the better part of two decades spent working as a community activist in Chicago, will counsel that Democrats can and must offer a bold progressive program as the counterpoint to Republican obstruction and extremism.
“That gives Democrats an opportunity—if we can seize it,” says Ramirez, who will respond to the president’s speech on behalf of the Working Families Party, which argues that Democrats can build voter enthusiasm and congressional majorities by promoting a progressive agenda deeply rooted in commitments to economic, social, and racial justice, climate action, and a just foreign policy. At a time when there is a great deal of pressure on Biden and party leaders in the House and the Senate to veer toward the center, Ramirez and the WFP see a future for a left-leaning Democratic Party that is engaged with the real-life issues that matter for working-class Americans.
“I will be laying out a vision for how Democrats can win working-class voters of all races and nationalities by fighting for a government that has working people’s backs,” Ramirez tweeted on Friday.
The representative argued in a statement that “Social Security, Medicare, abortion rights and comprehensive immigration reform are not political talking points. They’re essential to our nation’s well being.” She added, “We must also show working people how Democrats will deliver for them if they put us back in the majority. That’s our path to a working families majority in Congress.”
I linked to the entire speech on YouTube below.
Ramirez also made national headlines when Title 42 ended a month ago. As her husband is a DACA recipient, immigration issues are often at the forefront of her legislative priorities. Here is what she had to say about the end of Title 42.
Illinois’ first Latina congresswoman recently returned from visiting the southern U.S. border with Mexico. Her visit came as a controversial COVID-era immigration policy is scheduled to end.
Congresswoman Delia Ramirez of Illinois’ third Congressional District said she’s glad that Title 42 is expiring.
“Title 42 needed to come to an end,” Ramirez said. “But the real solution is to ensure that we have a comprehensive immigration reform and that it happens immediately. The real solution is making sure that we are working with these other countries to get to the root cause of migration, and (seeking) how we can support people in their countries. But also, that we are never, ever denying people asylum.”
She said Title 42 doesn’t represent U.S. values.
Title 42 refers to a policy authorized under the Trump Administration that allowed for US Border patrol to expel migrants from seeking asylum in the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic. Immigrant rights advocates argue it was less about the health risk and instead a pretext to keep migrants out of the country.
Since it went into effect, the United States has used Title 42 over 2.8 million times to expel migrants.
Last spring, the CDC said the policy was no longer necessary, but battles in the courts kept the rule intact.
A profile in ELLE magazine was also published on the two roommates in the Squad in Ramirez and Rep. Summer Lee (PA-12). It chronicles the struggles in adjusting to DC in the first 100 days of Congress.
It’s an origin story straight from a college brochure: Summer Lee and Delia Ramirez arrive at freshman orientation, excited but nervous about their upcoming term. They meet, realize neither of them has figured out their housing, and eagerly ask each other, “Do you want to be roommates?”
But Lee and Ramirez aren’t in school—they’re freshman members of Congress, helping to expand the U.S. House’s growing progressive “squad.” Lee is representing Pennsylvania’s 12th district, where she overcame millions of dollars spent against her campaign to become the state’s first Black congresswoman, and Ramirez is representing Illinois’ 3rd district as the first Latina congresswoman from the Midwest and the rare member of Congress in a mixed-status marriage. (Her husband is a DACA recipient.) “We’re both working class-background women, and it was very clear rent in D.C. is so, so expensive,” Lee explained. “It was a great choice to share space with another woman from my generation who is taking on this fight.”
During their first 100 days in Congress, the two let ELLE.com into their space (watch them get ready for a day at work, below) and into their lives—checking in each month to give a crash course on what it’s like being young, progressive women of color operating inside one of the nation’s oldest institutions.
It is likely that Rep. Delia Ramirez will continue pushing for progressive legislation, and that she will continue to generate headlines in that capacity.
Bills and Legislative Priorities
Ramirez sat down for a lengthy interview with WGN (a well known Chicago station) right before she joined Congress. She discussed her background, as well as her hopes and dreams for the new Congress she was about to join.
Rep. Delia Ramirez is a part of the Committee of Homeland Security and also the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. The first committee allows her to shape legislation regarding immigration, especially since she is on that subcommittee. Here are some remarks recently about her stances on immigration.
Here is her attempt to fix the broken immigration system in America. Of course, it has little chance of passing in this Congress.
The second committee allows her to work on economic opportunities for veterans. For instance, her work has allowed her to introduce the Expanding Health Care Providers for Veterans Act, which aims to tackle the shortage of workers in the VA system.
In addition to being part of the Squad, Ramirez is a part of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Members of that caucus called for Biden to unilaterally use the 14th amendment to end this debt ceiling charade. Here are comments in chambers that she made on the subject. This is a thread, as her speech is rather long…
Ramirez was a NO on the Bipartisan Debt Ceiling Deal, like most of the Squad (but not all of them) were. The changes to SNAP/TANF and the resuming of the student loan repayments were her reasons for voting no — but she telegraphed her intentions the night the deal was reached.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of her legislative priorities or her speeches. In order to get the full picture of Rep. Delia Ramirez, it is best to follow her on social media. She is just around 2.7k followers on Twitter, so she could use the support if you are so inclined.
Rep. Delia Ramirez brings a fiery progressive persona to proceedings, yet at the same time she can be thoughtful and reflective, even at this stage in her Congressional career. While she isn’t the most experienced legislator in the freshman class, Ramirez has enough experience under her belt to make an impact on legislation in her committees and subcommittees. Her grand vision and legislative priorities will have to wait for Democratic members of Congress to have a majority, however.
As a member of the Squad and also a member of Congress from Chicago, Ramirez is much more likely to make the headlines when compared to your average new member of Congress. The fact that she was tapped to give a response to the State of the Union this early in her career is a promising sign of her potential.
Ramirez is likely to be in Congress for a while, and with seniority comes more chances to be influential. Rep. Delia Ramirez will continue to be a voice for underserved communities, especially in her home turf of Chicago. From her roots as a community organizer, the sky is the limit for her.
Next Sunday, I will profile Rep. Rob Menendez from New Jersey’s 8th district. See you then!
Delia Ramirez (Illinois-3)
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Please help our Democratic freshmen in the 118th Congress raise more funds with the New Faces in Congress Fund. Until election day in 2024, we plan to regularly add new names to our list of recipients. Please share a link to this site on your social media!
