This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Philadelphia • Focused on how a broken immigration system weighs on schoolchildren, Lily Eskelsen Garcia, the president of the National Education Association, said Hillary Clinton will keep families together and Donald Trump will break them apart.
Eskelsen Garcia is the only Utahn expected to take the stage during the Democratic National Convention. She was among a group of five labor leaders who took the stage Monday.
"They tell us they are afraid that their parents might be taken away," Garcia, the daughter of an immigrant mother and an Army veteran father, said of the children of immigrants. "Hillary Clinton believes ... educators should be focused on education not deportation."
She panned Trump's proposal to build a massive border wall separating the United States from Mexico and deport more undocumented immigrants. "We're better than that," she said. "Our kids deserve better than that."
Eskelsen Garcia took over the 3-million-member NEA in July 2014, focusing on what she calls "toxic testing" and immigration.
She began her career as a lunch lady and then a kindergarten aid before going on to teach at Orchard Elementary in West Valley City for a decade.
She got involved in the Utah Education Association when she had 39 fifth-graders in the same class, and later rose to president of the organization. In 1998, she tried her hand in politics, running unsuccessfully against then-Rep. Merrill Cook, R-Utah.
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