I'm Isaac Dover. Welcome to Off Message.

This week's guest, Congressman Adrana Espayat, who is the first formerly undocumented immigrant to be elected to Congress.

He's a Democrat, represents Upper Manhattan, and parts of the Bronx in New York.

We sat down with him at Bullfeathers, where we were planning to have a couple of beers, but then votes got called right as he was walking over.

So we had to skip a Corona or El Presente, which he said he wanted.

Make that up to him another time. I started out myself covering New York politics and one of the

first races I covered was the Manhattan Borough President's race in 2005 when Espionat was an

assemblyman from Washington Heights. I think it was a nine-way race, and he came in, I believe, fifth.

Did not do all that well. But five years later, he was elected to the state Senate in New York,

and then almost immediately started getting ready to run for Congress. His aim was to knock Charlie

Rangel, the longtime congressman out, and came very close to doing that in 2014.

Some say he actually did win that race, and there was some funny business at the New York Board of Elections that helped pull that off for Rangel.

But nonetheless, in 2016, Rangel didn't run again.

Esbyat ran then for an open seat and won a really contested primary and has arrived in Congress working on what he told us was his initial passion, which was foreign affairs, even though he spent the last 25 years of his life in local politics and local

government in New York. We talked about his experience coming here as a nine-year-old boy

being told by his grandmother to watch out for the men in trench coats, whom he was warned

could round him and his brother up.

And then going back to the Dominican Republic to do the official paperwork after they'd already overstayed their visas

and how playing in a swimming pool against his father's orders

helped actually get him his visa with the consul general at the time.

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Email me at Isaacat Politico.com.

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