Vice News: Immigrant Iowa (VIDEO)

Feb 2, 2016
10:12 AM

The 2016 race to the White House is now in full swing with yesterday’s first-in-the-nation Iowa caucus, and it turned out to be a day full of surprises. Donald Trump, the billionaire mogul who’s enjoyed a cozy lead over his Republican opponents since last summer, came in four points behind Ted Cruz, the Bible-thumping, Obama-bashing senator from Texas. On the blue team, formerly presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton barely edged Bernie Sanders, the junior senator from Vermont and self-proclaimed atheist socialist. It was so close, in fact, that when you round their shares, both Clinton and Sanders finished at 50 percent, which led to both candidates delivering victory speeches.

Trump’s shocking defeat in Iowa may be due in no small part to Kenia Calderon, an undocumented immigrant and student at Drake University in Des Moines, who for the past several weeks has been an active leader in the immigrant protest movement against Trump’s campaign. Michael Moynihan of Vice News shadowed Kenia for a few days and featured her in a recent segment.

When I do my activism work, I’m very realistic. You see a lot of activists say, “Citizenship now!” I don’t agree with that. I don’t. I feel like there’s gotta be a process. I understand when they say they don’t want open borders. If I was born here, maybe I would say the same thing.