Dulce Valencia: I Can’t Believe Donald Trump Won the Nevada Caucus

By Dulce Valencia, Latina DREAMer from Nevada

Last night, Donald Trump won the Nevada Caucus. As a Latina and a DREAMer from Nevada, he is not the candidate I want.

Donald Trump has centered his campaign around discriminating against immigrants. He’s made blatantly racist remarks referring to Mexicans as rapists and drug dealers, and has promised to rip apart millions of immigrant families in Nevada and across the country.

And just like every other Republican politician running for President, he has threatened to restrict access to reproductive health care at Planned Parenthood — which hundreds of thousands of Latinas rely on every year for birth control, Pap smears, and cancer screenings.

Donald Trump could not be more backward. He’d rather shut down the government than allow over one million Americans — including 575,000 Latinos — to access health care at Planned Parenthood. He would ban safe, legal abortion, leading to a whole nation that looks like Texas, where at least 100,000 women have attempted to self-induce their own abortions, without medical assistance. And without thinking twice, he’d cut insurance coverage of birth control, meaning women would pay an estimated $1.4 billion more a year to cover their birth control.

After three straight victories, Donald Trump is the clear GOP frontrunner. His policies and his disregard for immigrants and women show just how much is at stake in this election — and it scares me.

He’s not the only GOP candidate with horrible stances on both of these key issues for Latinos. All of the GOP candidates have also proven to be anti-immigration. Heck, the only Latino candidates in the race raised by immigrant parents — Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz — would rip immigrant families apart with their dangerous and backward immigration policies, and obstruct any path to citizenship. And all of their voting records on reproductive rights are abhorrent.

These candidates don’t understand. Being undocumented impacts every aspect of your life. It meant that in high school I couldn’t get a part-time job or a driver’s license like all of my friends. It meant that I couldn’t just go to the doctor whenever I was sick, or needed a regular check-up, or if I ever needed birth control.

Hillary Clinton understands that these issues are connected.

That’s why it matters to me so much that she stands with Planned Parenthood — one of the primary health care providers for Latinos and one of the largest providers of birth control in the country. They are also proud to provide services to patients regardless of their immigration status.

Planned Parenthood has played a pivotal role in educating the Latino community about the benefits for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and helped mixed status families gain access to lifesaving health care navigate this process.

The same people who are trying to attack my right to stay in this country are the same people who are attacking people’s rights to access affordable and high quality health care.

I need a candidate who supports us making a living wage, who supports our access to education, who supports our access to health care as immigrants and my access to reproductive health care as a young woman.

Hillary Clinton is that candidate.

I know that Hillary Clinton will protect my family, and the millions of other undocumented and mixed status families in the country. She told me so herself.

Not only will she fight for a pathway to citizenship, and fight to keep my family together, she will fight to ensure we have access to health care.

Hillary’s not a single-issue candidate and I’m not a single-issue supporter. I stand with her because she stands with us.

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