Back in 2015, Julissa Arce’s incredible story of becoming a Wall Street executive while undocumented piqued the interest of Ivanka Trump, who tweeted about it. Now with her father in the thick of a tight presidential race and proposing an “impenetrable, physical wall” along the U.S.-Mexico border, it’s tough to imagine she’d be so congratulatory if she was pressed about it today.
Arce, who chronicles her experience as a Mexican immigrant in her memoir, My (Underground) American Dream, sat down with HuffPost Latino Voices editor Carolina Moreno on Friday and shared what crossed her mind when she saw the tweet.
“She tweeted that out in March of 2015, so just a few months before Donald Trump announced his bid for presidency by calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals,” Arce told HuffPost in the video above. “I remember thinking, ‘What has changed? What changes in those three months?’ Nothing changes.”
Arce added that it’s crucial for immigrants, like herself, whose experiences have become such a big part of this election cycle to chime in on the conversation.
“When you look on television, the only people discussing these issues, they’re not people like us. They’re talking about us, but they’ve never had to one day live in our shoes,” she said. “So when I look at that tweet, I think, ‘You love this story, because you realize that this is an American story.’ This is a story that millions of people live.”
While Trump’s platform is overtly hostile to undocumented immigrants, Arce said the immigrants she knows are “striving to be better and to contribute to this country.
“Donald Trump can be out there saying whatever he’s saying, but the reality is very different. And the truth about immigrants is very different.”
Watch the full interview with author Julissa Arce here.