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By Emily Cochrane

When President Trump delivered his State of the Union address in 2019, he pointed to El Paso as a sign of the success of his immigration policies, claiming it had been transformed from “one of our nation’s most dangerous cities” to “one of the safest cities in our country” by the construction of a border wall.

In the audience, Representative Veronica Escobar, the Democrat who represents the majority of the predominantly Hispanic city bordering Mexico, was visibly furious at the president’s reference to her community, crossing her arms from her seat on the House floor and mouthing “oh my God, oh my God.”

“He’s lying about what happened before the wall,” she said afterward. “El Paso has been a safe community for decades. We were long before a wall was ever constructed.”

A year later, Ms. Escobar will have the chance to respond directly to Mr. Trump, not just for her community but for the Democratic Party, when she delivers the Spanish-language rebuttal from El Paso to Mr. Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night.

Speaking at a community clinic along the southwestern border, Ms. Escobar plans to focus in part on health care — a priority for voters, particularly those concerned about protections for pre-existing conditions — and what Democrats have accomplished in their first year in control of the House of Representatives, including passing legislation out of that chamber expanding background checks on gun purchases.

“The speech will not and cannot be about El Paso, because this is the Democratic response,” Ms. Escobar said. But, she added, “It was important to deliver the speech from El Paso, because El Paso has been at the center of the administration’s policies.”

Along with Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, who will deliver a response in English from East Lansing High School, Ms. Escobar will be tasked with framing the Democrats’ official answer to Mr. Trump’s prime-time speech to a joint session of Congress, with each woman receiving about 10 minutes to speak after the president concludes.

The selection of Ms. Escobar, a freshman, to give the speech on Tuesday night reflected her rising profile within the Democratic caucus. Her community of El Paso has become the epicenter of some of the most politically fraught debates of Mr. Trump tenure, over his administration’s treatment of immigrants and the president’s own ugly rhetoric about them.

“Cosmic justice” is how her friend, Representative Sylvia Garcia, a fellow freshman Democrat from Texas, put it, Ms. Escobar recalled, when she learned that Ms. Escobar had been chosen to respond to Mr. Trump. (Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, informed Ms. Escobar of the decision last month, waking the Texas congresswoman with an early-morning phone call as Ms. Pelosi was about to board a plane for a congressional trip to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.)

In an interview on Tuesday, Ms. Escobar said it was fitting for her be delivering the Democratic rebuttal from her district.

“Through every challenge that has been presented to us as a community, El Paso has risen to the challenge in the most beautiful way,” she said. “We represent the best of America. We represent what America can be in the face of challenges.”

Among the first two Latina women to represent Texas in the House along with Ms. Garcia, Ms. Escobar was first elevated as a voice of authority by Democratic leadership over the summer during a fraught debate over sending supplementary aid to the southwestern border. Months later, she was chosen by her congressional peers to become a representative for the freshman class in Ms. Pelosi’s leadership circle.

A member of the House Judiciary Committee, Ms. Escobar has publicly clashed with the president, particularly after a gunman, warning of a “Hispanic invasion,” killed 22 people at a superstore in El Paso in August.

When the White House invited Ms. Escobar, a third-generation resident of El Paso, to join the president in a visit to the city after the shooting, she instead asked for a phone call to tell Mr. Trump that the language he has often used to describe Latinos is dehumanizing. The president, she said, was “too busy” to talk, and Ms. Escobar declined to accompany him on the trip.
“The president uses hyperbole, and is often flat-out dishonest in what he tells the American public,” Ms. Escobar said. “We cannot confront out challenges if we’re not honest about what they are.”

After graduating from New York University with a master’s degree in English literature, Ms. Escobar returned to Texas and volunteered with an immigration group and political campaigns. She then ran for office herself, winning a seat on El Paso County’s governing body before seeking the House seat vacated by Beto O’Rourke, who in 2018 unsuccessfully ran against Senator Ted Cruz.

Ms. Escobar said she first wrote her speech in English, her first language, before translating it to Spanish, in part to help facilitate the translation of words like “background check” that she does not normally use in Spanish. Her husband timed her delivery, as she whittled down the speech from 15 minutes to 10 minutes and finalized it Monday morning.

“It was challenging to think of what to focus on and what to let go of,” she said.

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