Cindy Nava is used to being the first: the first in her family to graduate from college, the first in her family to buy a home, and the first former Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient to receive a White House political appointment. Nava is now running for Senate District 9 in New Mexico, and in just a few days, she may also become one of the first former DACA recipients to win a general election.

While being the first is certainly an honor, Nava said it’s also an isolating experience.

“This has been the struggle of my life,” Nava said. “I’ve always wanted to connect with someone who fully understands me. I could never really find that, so I would take bits and pieces from people with slightly similar stories. Maybe I like this woman’s leadership style; this person has immigrant family members, and I like their approach to policy. I’ve been collecting these puzzle pieces to find a way into this political world, but at the end of the day, this is still a new, unprecedented sort of election in terms of who I represent and who I am.”

At least one person in the U.S. understands her situation: Luis Mata, who is running for District 49 in Tennessee. As a former DACA recipient, Mata could be the first Latinx immigrant elected to the Tennessee State House. Both Nava and Mata are immigrants from Mexico and Democrats running against anti-immigrant Republicans. Just knowing the other exists has brought the candidates a bit of comfort. 

“[Nava] texted me, and it was a real ‘oh my God’ kind of moment,” Mata told Prism. “There are two of us, and if we’re the first, we have to make sure we’re not the last.” 

Historically, a relatively small number of elected officials have been immigrants. This includes Rep. Ilhan Omar, who came to the U.S. as a child refugee and is one of a handful of current high-ranking public officials who are naturalized citizens. The number of formerly undocumented immigrants who have attained public office is miniscule. There’s Adriano Espaillat, the Dominican U.S. representative for New York’s 13th congressional district and largely considered the first formerly undocumented member of Congress, former Nevada congressman and state legislator Ruben Kihuen, an immigrant from Mexico who called himself the first “Dreamer elected to Congress,” and current Assemblywoman Catalina Cruz, a “former Dreamer” from Colombia who represents New York State Assembly District 39.

Mata, 28, and Nava, 37, came of age when the Obama administration implemented DACA, granting them work permits and the ability to remain in the U.S. lawfully—opportunities never experienced by their parents and millions of other undocumented immigrants who don’t qualify for the program. Nava and Mata are now naturalized citizens—a process that took them nearly two decades—and they are eager to shape public policy to support all working families, including undocumented and mixed-status. It won’t be easy—partly because of the American public’s anti-immigrant shift. 

Former and current DACA recipients have made tremendous strides across industries that once seemed impossible for them to enter, including medicine, law, art, and literature. Public office, however, remains largely elusive. This is partly because of state and federal laws that govern immigrants’ ability to run for office. However, American voters may prove to be the biggest hurdle. Is the U.S. ready for formerly undocumented lawmakers—and, more specifically, are voters ready to let immigrants play a role in shaping the unjust political and legal systems they’ve spent their entire lives navigating?

Opposition everywhere  

In recent years, a small wave of formerly undocumented immigrants has sought political office—some facing incredible pushback. In 2018, Maria Palacios was disqualified from running for the Georgia State House when a voter in her district challenged her candidacy. Palacios was a citizen for one year when former Secretary of State (and current governor) Brian Kemp ultimately barred her from running, citing the Georgia constitution that says a candidate has to be a “citizen of the state,” not just a resident, for at least two years.

Nava has also experienced efforts to disqualify her. Based on a simple mix-up regarding the town and county listed on her nominating petitions, New Mexico’s Democratic County Commissioner Katherine Bruch and former democratic state Sen. John Sapien filed a lawsuit to invalidate the signatures nominating Nava for the District 9 seat. Nava’s Republican opponent, Audrey Trujillo, also filed a similar lawsuit. Both lawsuits were dismissed earlier this year, and while many politicos in New Mexico assured Nava these are common tactics and simply “part of the game,” Nava said it illustrated how different the stakes are for candidates like her. 

“Even if they were baseless claims, suing me is not the same as suing any other candidate,” Nava explained, noting that she has undocumented family members. “I have grown up in a family where you could never be in trouble because one mistake could lead to deportation. So, to be in a primary with a woman who would engage these kinds of tactics was really hard to swallow. I had many sleepless nights.” 

At times, it can feel like the opposition has come from all sides. Nava said that when the Biden administration first appointed her to work in the Department of Housing and Urban Development, some organizers called her a “sellout”—and it wasn’t the first time she found herself at odds with the movement.

“As a younger person, I was afraid to go to marches and rallies. I didn’t feel comfortable; I was scared. I stood very firmly against the whole notion of being ‘undocumented, unafraid, and unapologetic.’ It didn’t feel real to me or my parents. My dad was working construction, and my mom was cleaning houses, and the idea of being ‘unafraid’ was impossible. So my tactic has always been to learn the system as much as I can so that I can legitimately be in a place one day where I can change things for the long run and for more people than just myself,” said Nava, who first began advocating for undocumented students as a teenager. She later worked without pay at the New Mexico Legislature for a decade, just for the opportunity to learn and gain political experience. 

While their stories and policy proposals overlap, Nava and Mata navigate different political realities in their respective states. New Mexico is a minority-majority blue state with the highest percentage of Latinx residents in the U.S. As of 2021, 50.1% of the state’s population identified as Hispanic or Latino. Tennessee, on the other hand, is a Republican stronghold, with Latinx residents making up just 7.5% of the population. All across the South, the number of Latinx people has steadily grown over the last three decades, but even basic supportive structures are lacking for these communities–especially immigrants. 

This is largely why Mata first entered the political sphere as a teenager. At 15, he learned he was undocumented, which barred him from obtaining a driver’s license and a job; it also made college extremely cost-prohibitive. DACA recipients and undocumented students are blocked from accessing federal financial aid, and Tennessee is one of nine states that prohibit undocumented residents, including DACA recipients, from accessing in-state tuition. Mata came to Tennessee as a four-year-old, but as a college student, he was still forced to pay nearly three times the in-state tuition, amounting to more than $20,000 a year for community college. 

“I felt really alone,” Mata said. “Schools didn’t know how to help me, my family didn’t know how to help me, and I didn’t know how to help myself.” Everything changed when Mata heard an undocumented student speak at a community event. His feelings of helplessness subsided, and he was spurred to action. “Finally, I felt like I found my people; I found my community,” Mata told Prism. 

Obtaining DACA in 2013 helped Mata graduate from college and pursue work in nonprofits and on campaigns. By the time he became a citizen in 2023, he’d spent years steeped in public policy—mostly out of survival. Organizing and working toward progressive causes in Tennessee means that there are many losses and no easy wins—a reality that also translates to the state House. 

“The skills, the tools, the knowledge that I was able to obtain as an organizer being on the ground with the community, is exactly the same way that I will govern in office,” Mata said. “Access to power means nothing if you are not bringing your people with you. I know it’s going to be an uphill battle here in Tennessee and across the South, where young progressive candidates of color face unique obstacles running for office. There are people doing everything they can to remain in power and maintain the status quo in ways that never served our communities.”

‘What I hope to be’ 

While immigration is central to their personal narratives, like Latinx people nationwide, Nava and Mata are concerned with far more than the endless battle surrounding the Southern border. Both are running campaigns that prioritize issues like protecting abortion access and public education and reducing everyday costs for working families. Nava said that Latino immigrants want what all Americans want: a fighting chance—for more and better for their children and for safety, stability, and progress for their communities. Some people are born into these conditions; others have to fight like hell for them and still only receive a fraction of what they deserve. 

Mata and Nava are among those who’ve had to fight like hell, and many in the media have cast them as exceptional because, as formerly undocumented immigrants, they have graduated college, purchased homes, won awards, been appointed by the White House, helped pass legislation, and run for public office. But there is an inherent brilliance, tenacity, and ingenuity in undocumented communities that are rarely recognized as such, and that has nothing to do with hitting these extraordinary milestones. Could you move to another country—one where your mere existence is criminalized and where you don’t know the language or the landscape—and start life anew, finding work, housing, community, and opportunity in a matter of months?

If Mata and Nava are exceptional, it is not despite coming from people who have done this; it is because they come from people who have done this. Nava said that as unpopular as it has become, this is why she is a firm believer in the American Dream: because you can “shift an entire world in a generation.”  

There is hope and promise in progressive, new American candidates that is increasingly rare in U.S. politics. Candidates like Nava and Mata give us a glimpse not at the country we are but at the one we have always purported to be. Mata says he feels the pressure of his candidacy and of this particular political moment in the U.S. 

The stakes in this election are incredibly high for immigrant communities. Mata said it’s hard to wrap his head around the possibility of another Trump administration and that he is potentially on the precipice of a history-making, life-changing election that has the power to alter the parameters of what is possible in his family and for immigrants in Tennessee.

Earlier this summer, Tennessee passed a law requiring law enforcement to report a person’s immigration status to federal authorities. This is the most surefire way to increase the risk of family separation, detention, and deportation for undocumented and mixed-status families. At a community event shortly after the law was passed, a person Mata has been in movement spaces with for years approached him and said, “You better win.” 

“These issues are life and death for our communities,” Mata said. “That’s why I fully believe in representation. I believe in representation that not only looks like us, but representation that looks out for us–and that’s what I hope to be for people in Tennessee.”