All About Ileana Ros-Lehtinen!

All About Ileana Ros-Lehtinen!

(picture from https://ros-lehtinen.house.gov/about-me/full-biography)

Biography: (all from https://ros-lehtinen.house.gov/about-me/full-biography)

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen represents Florida's 27th District in Congress. She was born on July 15, 1952 in Havana, Cuba, which makes her part of the 1%! (of foreign-born Congressional representatives in the 114th Congress). She emigrated from Cuba to the United States at the age of 8 because of the rise of Fidel Castro, and she settled in the beautiful town of Miami. After attending public schools in Miami, she attended a community college in Miami and Florida International University to earn her associates, bachelors, and masters degree, in 1972, 1975, and 1985, respectively. She later earned her Doctorate in Education from the University of Miami in 2004. After becoming a classroom teacher, she went into politics after having the desire to fight for the rights of the students and parents that she had the privilege to teach. Representative Ros-Lehtinen was elected to the Florida State House and Florida State Senate, becoming the first Hispanic woman to be elected to either body. She was elected to the House of Representatives in 1989 via a special election and has been serving in Congress ever since, as she was just elected to her 15th term in 2016.

Personal Life: Ros-Lehtinen has been married since 1984 to Dexter Lehtinen, the former US Attorney for the South Florida district, who prosecuted Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega. She has 2 children and 2 step-children and is the proud grandmother to four grandchildren. One of her children, Rodrigo, is a transgender rights activist, having transitioned from female to male from 2007-2012. She is also Episcopalian, although she is ethnically Jewish.

Congressional Career: Currently, Representative Ros-Lehtinen is the Chairman Emeritus of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa. She is also a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (https://ros-lehtinen.house.gov/about-me/committees-and-caucuses). Within that committee, she is on the CIA subcommittee and the Cybersecurity and NSA subcommittee, but most of these committees' proceedings are not published. She is the most senior Republican woman in Congress. Interestingly enough, she was the first Republican to support same-sex marriage, saying that it is important "that families support their children's choices." She has sponsored many bills in Congress, the most recent of them being the US-Jordan Defense Act of 2015. Representative Ros-Lehtinen has received a 0% rating from the ACLU due to her pro-life status and bills such as the Reproductive Rights for Minors bill that she introduced in 2005.