Illegal: Life and Death in Arizona’s Immigration War Zone

Award-winning PHOENIX magazine writer Terry Greene Sterling reveals the intimate lives of Maricopa County’s illegal immigrants, as well as their friends and foes, in her first-ever book.

Illegal by Terry Greene Sterling

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

Most of the people you’ll meet in these pages are unauthorized Mexican immigrants who lived in Phoenix during the 17 months I researched this book. At this writing, some of these men and women still live in Phoenix. Others have vanished. This is not unusual.

The Mexicans you’ll meet risked their lives to get to Phoenix for a number of reasons. Adventure. Ambition. Love. Survival.

Many had no choice but to come north. Free trade, the shutting down of Mexican factories, and an inchoate drug war supercharged illegal immigration into the United States through its main portal, Arizona.

Today, immigrants must navigate ever more treacherous trails slicing through cacti, slicing through Malpais rock, slicing through searing creosote flats, slicing through mountains littered with human bones, smugglers, kidnappers, Minutemen, and Border Patrol agents.

Their numbers may be reduced, but still, people keep crossing the line.

So, come with me.

Let’s take the immigrant trails up from the border to Phoenix, ground zero for the nation’s divisive immigration war, the birthplace of the harshest immigration laws in the nation, the hunting grounds of Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

The people in the shadows have long hidden from the sheriff.

But they won’t hide from you.  

They want you to know their stories.

Illustrations by Nathan Fox

Editor’s note: The following excerpts are taken from ILLEGAL: Life and Death in Arizona’s Immigration War Zone, by Terry Greene Sterling (2010), excerpted by permission of the Lyons Press, a division of Morris Book Publishing LLC. These are portions of chapters within the book, which will be available July 1.

Chapter 4: America's Toughest Sheriff

One January afternoon in 2009, the Toughest Sheriff in America stepped out of a black sedan parked near the front door of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Training Academy in Phoenix. The seventy-six-year-old sheriff, who usually dresses in civvies, wore a pressed uniform with metal collar pin. A large star-shaped badge was positioned just above the left shirt pocket. This was a special day; Joe Arpaio would soon be sworn in to his fifth term as sheriff of Maricopa County, the epicenter of immigration controversy in America. He’d gotten elected in part because his deputies and volunteer posse members had been raiding Latino neighborhoods and workplaces, rounding up and jailing undocumented immigrants during the election year. The immigrants were often turned over to Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas for prosecution for such laws as conspiring to smuggle themselves through Arizona. The sweeps had resulted in outrage from pro-migrant activists, which Sheriff Joe loved for two reasons. First, he delighted in conflict. Second, he loved publicity.

Sheriff Joe knew the name of practically every reporter who had covered him since he became sheriff in 1993, and he was an expert manipulator of the media. “It doesn’t matter if a story is good or bad,” he once told me, “my poll ratings go up every time the press blasts me.” (The words blast, Mickey Mouse, and garbage surfaced often in my interviews with Sheriff Joe.)

I stood in the January sunshine watching the sheriff joke with aides who’d helped him win the 2008 election. His victory proved that his round-up-the-Mexicans strategy had been politically astute. Once again, Sheriff Joe was on top. His wife of more than fifty years, Ava, had by then climbed out of the sedan and was standing by his side. She wore a black pantsuit, and her red fingernail polish matched her red lipstick. When Sheriff Joe laughed with his deputies, Ava smiled. When Sheriff Joe walked into the auditorium, Ava walked into the auditorium, too. (In a rare Q and A with The Arizona Republic, in 2009, Ava portrayed her husband as a romantic guy who never forgot Valentine’s Day.)

I wasn’t invited to this swearing-in event, but I attended it anyway, because as always I hoped to learn what made the sheriff tick. Was he all ambition and grandiosity? Was his ego so immense that it masked the pain he’d caused jail inmates and undocumented immigrants in order to advance himself?  Was he on some level a bully who’d been bullied himself? There were plenty of empty seats in the room where Sheriff Joe’s swearing-in ceremony would soon take place. Lisa Allen, a former television journalist and longtime Arpaio adviser and spokeswoman, began the ceremony by announcing that this time, a celeb would not swear in the sheriff. (Last term, John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted had sworn in Sheriff Joe.) This time, she said, “we wanted to do something more substantive.” So, she said, deputies had been dispatched to a citizenship ceremony at a hockey arena.

There they had found José Bello, a forty-five-year-old grocery store produce clerk from Mexico who had just become an American citizen. José had come to the United States twenty-five years before and had married a woman with a green card after knowing her for seventeen days. The Bellos’ two adult children worked in Sheriff Joe’s jails.

After Lisa Allen finished talking, José, a short man of medium build dressed in a gray suit, gave a short, nervous speech. (He spoke so softly I couldn’t understand him.) Then he swore in the sheriff, reading from a paper. It took all of a minute or two.

Next, Sheriff Joe faced the reporters. Although he looked tall and fierce on television, in real life he was short and had a paunch. Square-shaped bifocals framed his shrewd, dark eyes. He said he supported José because José immigrated to America legally, just like his own parents, who had immigrated to America legally from Italy. When he emphasized “legally,” he hesitated just for a split second and glowered, and this played well on TV, and he knew it. “I hope this sends a message: This is the greatest country in the world and if you work hard you can do well here, especially if you do it legally.”

This wasn’t the first time Phoenix reporters had heard Sheriff Joe speak of his national and international fame, his parents who came legally from Italy, and his resolve to enforce immigration laws. “Does anyone have any questions?” Sheriff Joe asked. No one had any questions. “What’s wrong with the news media?” Sheriff Joe asked, thin-lipped. One reporter asked gamely if the sheriff would go for Term Number Five. “This is Number Five,” Sheriff Joe replied. “Can’t you count?”

The reporters focused their attention on José Bello, who looked as if he’d rather be anywhere but in that auditorium, having just sworn in a sheriff who was reviled in the Latino community. But José’s kids worked for the sheriff, and he didn’t really have much of a choice.

When the reporters asked why he’d swear in a guy who ordered sweeps of Latino neighborhoods, he looked even more miserable and said the sheriff was obligated to enforce the law.…


Chapter 7: Don’t Stop The Music

I couldn’t help it. From the minute I met Ivan Bojorquez at a Dunkin’ Donuts in west Phoenix, I liked the guy. And it wasn’t just because he insisted on buying my coffee or because he was one of the few Mexican immigrant musicians who returned my telephone calls. What I liked about Ivan was his enviable work ethic and his cheerful, unfettered optimism in the face of tough odds.

When I met Ivan in 2010, he was nineteen years old. You wouldn’t have been able to pick him out of a crowd of college students. He was tall, thin, with short dark-brown hair and an easy smile. He spoke perfect English and dressed like many Americans his age – tennis shoes, jeans, hoodies. Ivan immigrated to Phoenix from his hometown of Sinaloa de Leyva, in the state of Sinaloa, in northwestern Mexico, when he was ten years old. His dad, a migrant laborer, had obtained legal residency through a 1986 law passed by the Reagan-era government that gave amnesty to undocumented immigrants who were residing in the United States at the time.

In 2001, after years of waiting, Ivan’s father obtained legal residency for his wife and two sons. After Ivan moved to Phoenix with his mom and brother, he mixed easily with Anglos. He picked up English from his Anglo friends and spoke English almost exclusively outside his home. But when he attended Alhambra High School, he switched to Spanish. In high school, it was only cool to speak Spanish. It was also cool to listen to Mexican music.

Ivan had always loved the music of the Mexican countryside, in part because he’d heard it all his life. His uncle was a musician, and Ivan had learned to play guitar in Mexico. After he graduated from high school with honors, he put off going to college so he could work in Phoenix for his uncle, mixing playlists of Mexican music for radio stations in the United States and Mexico. 

The music that Ivan mixed is known in the United States as “Mexican regional.” It is the music most listened to by Mexican immigrants, and they consume it with such enthusiasm that in 2009 Mexican regional music sales made up 60 percent of Latin music sales in the United States, according to Billboard magazine. That’s because the music speaks to the Mexican immigrant. It’s music from home, and it honors the immigrant’s struggles. Having lived in Arizona most of my life, I grew up hearing this music, and I love it, but I knew next to nothing about it until I called an expert – San Antonio Current music writer Enrique Lopetegui – to get a better understanding of the different types of Mexican regional music.

Enrique said if I wanted to listen to ranchero music, I should buy a record by singer Vicente Fernández. His songs are often accompanied by mariachis, and older ladies love his style.

According to press reports, in 2006, the aging crooner packed a bigger crowd at the Cow Palace than the Rolling Stones. Norteño music is accordion-based, with only four or five members in a group. Banda groups are a bit larger, and include a tuba or tambora. And of course in all these groups, you’ll hear guitars and singers.
The tuba and accordion reflect the influence of Germans who immigrated to Mexico in the nineteenth century.

One of the top-selling Latin bands in America has long been the California-based norteño group Los Tigres del Norte (The Tigers of the North), whose music is infused with all sorts of double entendres, code words, metaphors, and similes that resonate with the undocumented immigrant in the United States. In 2009, for instance, Los Tigres came out with a hit song called “La Granja” (The Farm), accompanied with a video of Orwellian-like farm animals. While the group remains mum on the meaning of the song, it has been widely interpreted as a jab at the players in the drug wars that have gripped Mexico.

As I write these words, I’m listening to my iPod. I downloaded a Los Tigres album, Pacto de Sangre, and just about every song is about the immigrant experience. As I type, they’re singing “El Santo de los Mojados,” which means “The Saint of the Wetbacks.” In the song, a migrant prays to St. Peter, “the patron saint of the undocumented.”

The migrant prays because he’s about to make the perilous journey across the desert because the Mexican government has turned his homeland into “hell.” The song ends with a plea for immigration reform – to St. Peter, of course.

Like Los Tigres, who are Mexican immigrants, Ivan Bojorquez knew how to tap into the immigrant experience. In 2008, he joined a norteño band called Los Herederos de La Sierra, which means “Heirs of the Mountains.” When I met up with Ivan in the Dunkin’ Donuts, the group had just won a $5,000 prize for winning a battle of the bands sponsored by Budweiser, which, incidentally, sells a lot of its product to Mexican immigrants.

The Herederos consisted of an accordionist named Luis, two guitar players, and a singer. The Herederos started out playing at backyard barbecues, and performed for free at radio-station promotions, then graduated to clubs and concerts in Phoenix. Like a lot of Mexican regional groups, Herederos got a MySpace page and recorded a CD themselves. 

Ivan was the only group member with a steady job; the three others were construction workers whose work had mostly dried up. The group performed at least once every weekend, sometimes three times.

The gigs brought in a monthly total of about $2,400, or $600 for each musician.

Money was tight. One month’s income did not even cover the $800 the Herederos each paid for their matching cowboy outfits. White hats. Red shirts. White belts. Jeans. Western-style jackets. White boots.

They wore those outfits, without the jackets, on the Saturday night in 2010 I saw them perform at a west Phoenix club. Like so many venues that had once attracted healthy crowds of undocumented immigrants, this facility could easily accommodate three hundred people.

It became clear that despite the wild popularity of Mexican regional music in the United States, the musicians and clubs that catered to undocumented immigrants in Phoenix were struggling.

On this night, despite the reasonable $10 cover charge, the club was almost empty. A couple of men sat at the bar, staring at a Virgin of Guadalupe painting, drinking beer. There were perhaps forty-five round tables with chairs, and most of these were vacant.

A man at a table near mine drank cold beers he pulled from an ice bucket set in front of him. Two women in their twenties sat with him. One woman smiled. The other woman stared at her drink or the crowd. The two women wore tight skirts and blouses and high heels. The man wore a cowboy hat, jeans, and boots, just like most of the other men in the room.

The Herederos played enthusiastically, but I couldn’t really enjoy the music. Too many eardrum-shattering squeaks and screeches from the less-than-perfect sound system. Almost everyone danced, but the dance floor seemed empty. A waiter told me the place would fill up, just wait and see. But the place didn’t fill up, even though the Herederos played their hearts out.

Later, the promoter for this unattended event, a man named Ernesto Ruelas, told me that about half of the Phoenix clubs had gone out of business – and 75 percent of the clients had disappeared from the clubs.

Ernesto’s income had dipped precipitously, because club owners couldn’t afford to pay much for the groups he represented. He was grateful his wife had a job at Burger King.

“Everyone tells me the same thing,” Ernesto said. “They tell me that as soon as Arpaio retires they’ll go to the clubs again. Until then, they’ll stay at home. They’re scared to go out.”…