Escobar worked as a nonprofit executive and as Raymond Caballero's communications director when he was mayor of El Paso. When Caballero failed to get reelected, Escobar—along with Susie Byrd, attorney Steve Ortega and businessman Beto O'Rourke—considered entering public service; they started to discuss grassroots strategies with the goals of improving urban planning, creating a more diversified economy with more highly skilled jobs, as well as ending systemic corruption among city leadership. Escobar was elected as a County Commissioner of El Paso County in 2006 and as the County Judge of El Paso County in 2010. O’Rourke, Byrd and Ortega also all ran for office and won; they came to be collectively referred to as "The Progressives." She also taught English and Chicano literature at UTEP and El Paso Community College.
Escobar resigned from office in August 2017 to run full-time in the 2018 election to succeed Beto O'Rourke in the United States House of Representatives for. As the district is a solidly Democratic, majority-Hispanic district, whoever won the Democratic primary would be heavily favored in November. She won the six-way Democratic primary with 61 percent of the vote. In June 2018, Escobar led protests in Tornillo, Texas, of the Trump administration family separation policy that involved the separation of children of immigrant families. The city is just miles from the Rio Grande, the river that forms the border of the United States and Mexico in the state of Texas. The Trump administration had created a "tent-city" in Tornillo, where separated children were being held without their parents. O'Rourke called this practice "un-American" and the responsibility of all Americans. Escobar won the general election on November 6, defeating Republican Rick Seeberger. She became the first woman to represent the 16th. With her victory, Escobar and Sylvia Garcia became the first Latina congresswomen from Texas. Although the 16th has long been a majority-Hispanic district, Escobar is only the second Hispanic ever to represent it, the first being Silvestre Reyes, O'Rourke's predecessor.
Tenure
On November 13, 2019, Escobar was elected as a freshman class representative in a secret ballot by her peers, filling the role of Katie Hill, who had resigned from Congress. On February 4, 2020, Escobar delivered the Spanish-language response to President Trump's State of the Union Address. Her remarks touched on healthcare, immigration, the national debt, the importance of diversity, the 2019 mass shooting in El Paso, wealth inequality, gun violence, and the United States–Mexico–Canada trade agreement. She called Trump and the Republican-controlled Senate "the greatest threat to our security."
