Jes­si­ca Cis­neros believes South Texas is ready for change. The 26-year-old human rights and immi­gra­tion attor­ney would be the youngest woman ever elect­ed to Con­gress if she wins in 2020, but she’s seen enough of pol­i­tics in the 28th Con­gres­sion­al dis­trict to know there’s much to improve.

"We don't want to be tied to the interests of corporations like he is. I want my commitment to be to the people here in South Texas."

A native of Lare­do, Texas, Cis­neros antic­i­pates that vot­ers will agree with her when she faces off against incum­bent Rep. Hen­ry Cuel­lar — who she refers to as ​“Trump’s favorite Demo­c­rat” — in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry next March. While Cuel­lar vot­ed with Trump and the GOP 67 per­cent of the time in the 115th Con­gress, Cis­neros — who has been backed by the Jus­tice Democ­rats — is run­ning on a bold plat­form of Medicare for All, free col­lege tuition and a Green New Deal. She has already been com­pared to anoth­er young Lati­na who took on a pow­er­ful Demo­c­ra­t­ic incum­bent by run­ning to his left: Alexan­dria Ocasio-Cortez.

In These Times spoke with Cis­neros, a for­mer intern of Rep. Cuel­lar, about her rea­sons for run­ning, how the influ­ence of oil and pri­vate prison mon­ey has helped main­tain the sta­tus quo, and the poten­tial for pro­gres­sive pol­i­tics in south Texas.

What moti­vat­ed you to run against Hen­ry Cuel­lar in the primary?

It was a lot of things. Peo­ple have been wait­ing for some­body to actu­al­ly cham­pi­on the true issues that they’re inter­est­ed in: Medicare for All, hav­ing a liv­able wage, and, espe­cial­ly in an area here where pover­ty is just so ram­pant along the bor­der, free col­leges and universities.

What stood out the most when I was intern­ing with Rep. Cuel­lar was that, in addi­tion to see­ing him very silent on all these issues that affect south Tex­ans, he knew that I was from the dis­trict and he nev­er once asked me what I thought the dis­trict need­ed. If I’m there five days a week and he nev­er real­ly had a con­ver­sa­tion like that, then how is he treat­ing the peo­ple that are in the dis­trict and don’t have that access to him?

From the very begin­ning of our cam­paign, we start­ed going out into the com­mu­ni­ty. The first thing peo­ple expressed was that they were shocked that some­body run­ning for Con­gress was ask­ing them what they think the prob­lems and solu­tions are. For the past 14 years, it has­n’t been like that.

Also, in my expe­ri­ence as an immi­gra­tion attor­ney, I saw first­hand the poli­cies com­ing from Wash­ing­ton. You could put your best effort into a case and the judge would still tell you, ​“I want to help your client, but I just can’t because the laws aren’t there.”

So if the laws aren’t there, then I’m going to go to Con­gress and change them.

Texas is often depict­ed as con­ser­v­a­tive oil coun­try. What indi­ca­tions have you got­ten from peo­ple in South Texas that they are ready for this change?

I think that depic­tion is just a myth being per­pet­u­at­ed by peo­ple like Cuel­lar who ben­e­fit from it. Peo­ple here in South Texas haven’t had an option to vote for some­body else oth­er than Cuel­lar. He was elect­ed when I was 11 years old, back in 2004. Cuel­lar has­n’t been pri­maried since 2006. This area of Texas is very blue. Hillary Clin­ton wiped the floor with Trump here. Beto O’Rourke won against Ted Cruz with a very sig­nif­i­cant margin.

We have some­body that calls him­self a Demo­c­rat, but he’s vot­ing with Trump near­ly 70 per­cent of the time. It’s unac­cept­able to have some­one like that rep­re­sent us. And not only is he turn­ing his back on our val­ues, but he’s actu­al­ly fundrais­ing for Repub­li­cans. He’s tak­ing mon­ey from GEO Group and oth­er pri­vate pris­ons, the Koch broth­ers, and the NRA. Peo­ple here know that, and they’re very excit­ed that they have some­body that’s actu­al­ly going to cham­pi­on their values.

One of the argu­ments Cuel­lar has made is that oil pro­duc­tion has actu­al­ly been help­ful, and fund­ed pub­lic edu­ca­tion for the dis­trict. How do you counter argu­ments that say, for instance, a pol­i­cy like the Green New Deal, which would effec­tive­ly elim­i­nate the fos­sil fuel indus­try, would lead to adverse eco­nom­ic effects for every­day Amer­i­cans in the 28th district?

All of that is stem­ming from the fact that Cuel­lar is tak­ing mon­ey from these oil cor­po­ra­tions. That’s why he has to defend them. So he’s try­ing to fig­ure out ways of tying those things to the com­mu­ni­ty so he can rep­re­sent the inter­ests of Exxon Mobil and Chevron. When he takes mon­ey from these cor­po­ra­tions, they’re going to expect a return on their invest­ment. That’s why it was so impor­tant for us from the very begin­ning of our cam­paign to not take any mon­ey from cor­po­rate PACs, because we don’t want to be sellouts.

We don’t want to be tied to the inter­ests of cor­po­ra­tions like he is. I want my com­mit­ment to be to the peo­ple here in South Texas.

You men­tioned Cuellar’s sup­port from GEO Group, which invests in pri­vate pris­ons. Do you think that these types of pri­vate pris­ons should exist in the Unit­ed States?

Of course not. I can tell you first­hand the abus­es that I’ve seen in deten­tion cen­ters. I am an immi­gra­tion attor­ney, and I focus specif­i­cal­ly on help­ing detained immi­grants. Dur­ing my pro bono projects in law school, there was one semes­ter where we focused on try­ing to bring to light their abus­es. We’re talk­ing about women being issued pre­vi­ous­ly used under­wear and get­ting sick from that, we’re talk­ing about peo­ple hav­ing to walk through waste­water, because pipes burst and the pri­vate prison was­n’t doing any­thing about that. We’re talk­ing about sex­u­al harass­ment and sex­u­al abuse.

We can­not have insti­tu­tions like these in our coun­try. We can’t con­done their human rights abus­es. It’s just unac­cept­able. We have a per­son like Cuel­lar who is also GEO Group’s favorite Con­gress­man, because he took $123,000 from GEO Group itself through­out his time in Con­gress. We can’t trust peo­ple like that to be lead­ing the way on immigration.

It’s extreme­ly alarm­ing, and extreme­ly unfor­tu­nate, that he’s the one that’s been tak­ing all this mon­ey, because we’re sit­u­at­ed on the bor­der, and peo­ple are going to be look­ing to us to be able to pro­vide solu­tions, because we see the prob­lems first­hand here. For him to be tak­ing this mon­ey, any of his votes or pro­pos­als will be to ben­e­fit GEO Group and Core­Civic [which owns and man­ages pri­vate pris­ons and deten­tion centers].

Some Democ­rats run­ning for pres­i­dent have embraced the lan­guage of Medicare for All but are actu­al­ly argu­ing for a more watered down plan, like a pub­lic option. Do you think a pub­lic option is enough right now?

Medicare for All is def­i­nite­ly one of the pol­i­cy pro­pos­als that we’re run­ning on. It’s des­per­ate­ly need­ed here on the bor­der, because Texas has the high­est rate of unin­sured peo­ple in the Unit­ed States.

I believe that health­care should be a human right, and I have per­son­al expe­ri­ence with this. I lost one of my aunts because she was unin­sured, and she had stom­ach can­cer, and she had no way to get treat­ment. As soon as we start­ed talk­ing to con­stituents about Medicare for All, and I told them my sto­ry, I found that they all know some­body that went through the same thing.

On the sec­ond day that we launched our cam­paign, we went into a com­mu­ni­ty and one woman told me that she need­ed a mam­mo­gram. It was, like, $70. She could­n’t afford it, and so she had to choose between fix­ing the air con­di­tion­ing at her home or get­ting the mam­mo­gram done. Here in south Texas, it gets real­ly, real­ly hot around this time of year. We’re talk­ing about 110 degrees dur­ing the day, and for her to have to make that choice, it’s ridicu­lous to say that we can­not afford uni­ver­sal health­care here.

What do you think about the fact that some mem­bers of the DCCC are crit­i­ciz­ing cam­paigns like yours that are chal­leng­ing long­time cen­trist Democrats?

For us to be able to run these cam­paigns is a fea­ture of our democ­ra­cy. Espe­cial­ly in this race, where we have some­body that’s fundrais­ing for Repub­li­cans, some­body that is tak­ing mon­ey from cor­po­ra­tions and groups that usu­al­ly fund Repub­li­cans, we have to be able to pri­ma­ry these people.

Just because you’re a Demo­c­rat does­n’t mean you’re actu­al­ly uphold­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues. And for the DCCC to dis­cour­age pri­maries, that’s a dis­ser­vice to not only Democ­rats here in South Texas, but Democ­rats every­where. Because if we aren’t able to do that, then Hen­ry Cuel­lar can take peo­ple in South Texas for grant­ed. That’s been the num­ber one com­plaint about him along the cam­paign trail. Peo­ple feel ignored. And that’s not right.