Today is Día de los Muertos, Day of the Dead.
I’m still here on the Texas border, in El Paso, where my story began. The same border I grew up crossing into Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico with my family.
My father, born in Illinois and raised in Nevada, spent his life on the road as a long-haul truck driver. Maybe that’s where I got my love for driving, and for the wide, open road. Whenever he was home, he loved visiting Juárez. My dad passed away a month after 9/11, just as I was beginning my career in national security. He worried about me living in D.C., but he also believed in service–just not blind trust in government.
He used to tell me: Work hard. Stay humble. Never expect anyone, especially the government, to have your back. As we continue to see what the Trump Administration is doing today, and the failure of so many in elected office who aren’t meeting the moment or standing up for the rule of law and the greater good, I’ve gained a better understanding of where he was coming from on that statement. He believed in limited government, individual freedom, and the simple truth that people matter more than possessions. Beliefs that he instilled in me.
He was conservative, patriotic, and hardworking. We were the average middle class family and I am a first generation college graduate. And though he never lived to see my years of service across public service in the intelligence community and in the White House, I think he’d be proud too, especially of the times I stood up and spoke out.
This weekend, for the first time since he passed more than two decades ago, I visited his grave on Día de los Muertos weekend. I also attended the Border Mass, a powerful gathering that honors migrants who’ve lost their lives seeking a better one. It’s the same dream that the Statue of Liberty at Ellis Island still represents.
Sitting there, I couldn’t help but think: my father would be heartbroken by what the Republican party, the party he once believed in has become—a movement driven by fear, division, and grift, turning its back on the very values that built this nation.
He married a Mexican woman he met on this border. Together they taught me that compassion has no border. I still remember the three of us loading up our Ford Bronco with Easter baskets and Christmas gifts, driving through the colonias of Juárez to hand them out to children. My father never saw the Rio Grande as a dividing line. He saw it as a bridge between people. Today, that bridge is barbed and patrolled, but the spirit of those who cross it for a better life still burns bright.
So I raise a toast, to my father, to my ancestors, to those we’ve loved and lost.
May their memory be a blessing. And may those of us still here continue to stand up for the America they believed in, an America that welcomes, not weaponizes; that listens, not silences; that stands for liberty and justice for all.
From a border-town girl raised between worlds, carrying her father’s lessons forward,
may we never let the light from the Statue of Liberty’s torch fade.
Happy Day of the Dead! Feliz Día de Los Muertos!
I promised you some footage of the celebrations on the border down here, so here’s a glimpse of the weekend for you.
-Olivia
