One Border, Many Sides

President Obama, appearing on Wednesday with Felipe Calderón, the president of Mexico, denounced Arizona’s new law on illegal immigration as “a misdirected expression of frustration over our broken immigration system.” Though the law is new, the frustration is most certainly not.

Two years ago, before the last presidential election, I interviewed people living and working in Phoenix and at the Arizona-Mexico border, and much of what I heard then echoes strongly in the debate over the Arizona law. Even then, as I sat at office desks, or in living rooms, or outside at picnic tables, the words were dramatic. The impassioned, rhythmic cadences suggested a social movement. I suspect the speakers were rehearsing the language that we are now hearing nationally.

Here are excerpts from those conversations:

Patricia Vroom, chief counsel for the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in Arizona.

Arizona doesn’t hate brown people. I think really what you’re talking about is more of a tension of “Well, wait a second here, I thought I knew that this was my land, what are you doing coming on my property and presuming to take it over?”

There’s literally thousands and thousands of people — I mean, at one point, the Border Patrol, the Tucson section, would arrest 20,000 people a week. I’ve flown over the border quite a few times in helicopters and the trash that is left by people who are coming in illegally, you could not believe it. In a wash, an area where people might have spent the night, they’ll leave plastic bags, they’ll leave backpacks, they’ll leave shoes and they’ve left their water bottles — because they typically will carry these gallon jugs of water with them. There will be plastic bags, there will be diapers.

There’s a lot of cattle that roam freely in a lot of these areas, and these animals will often be found who have died with huge distress because they will have swallowed one of these plastic bags and then it gets caught in their digestive tract and they die an agonizing death.

I mean, you’re up in a helicopter and you just see swarms of people sometimes — 150 in one place, and then you’ll see another group of 15 or 16 and then you’ll go a little bit longer and you’ll see the Border Patrol rounding up another five or six.

The drug cartels are also very much involved in human smuggling. It’s just terrible, terrible victimization of people who are being — who have allowed themselves to be smuggled because they don’t know what they’re buying into.

Miguel Calvillo, border crosser.

My father had been living here since 1985. And one day he told us that he would like us to come over so we could be all together.

Back in 1990 it was pretty easy to cross the border. We crossed right next to where the immigration officer was checking passports. Right next to it was like a big hole in the fence. It was so funny because he just stared at the side and said, “No, no, no, go back.” And then people just waited until he would get distracted so they could cross. But we were stopped within like 10 minutes. So we had to go back home, and I was excited because I really didn’t want to come, because I had a girlfriend. And then two weeks later we tried again and we made it that time.

The second time we didn’t cross through the hole; we had to jump over the fence.

And then when we got into the city, I was like, “Oh, my God.” I was in the United States, you know, looking at all the buildings and everything. And then we got into the apartment. I was expecting a big house with nice furniture, but it was totally different. It was my dad, my mom, my older brother, a family friend, my other older brother, myself and my little sister living in this studio. Because when I was a little kid and I used to read the letters my dad used to send to my mom, I mean you dream and imagine things. I imagined like they were living in this big house. We were little kids and we were dreaming about having the family all together finally.

In fact, my dad abandoned us for another woman months after he brought us here. Even though he left, he continued helping us with our documents. He submitted the applications for legal status and when he married that other woman that sped up the process because she is a U.S. citizen.

Roxana Bacon, lawyer, Phoenix (now chief counsel for United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, in Washington)

When you think about the sort of rhetoric of hate — it assumes that everybody’s packing their bags and racing north. It’s just not the case, and the kind of people who choose to immigrate are really people who look a lot like the American ideals. They’re ambitious. They’re fairly self-confident. They’re risk-takers. They’re kind of strong, hearty people. They’re usually driven because they want to protect their families, which are on the borderline of really falling apart because there’s actually no way to make any money in the country they’re sitting in. That’s the majority and then there’s a new stratum globally — very successful, capable professionals who move around mostly in the science and engineering fields.

Our housing industry, our service industry, our gardening, landscape industry, you name it — it’s been dependent for decades on Mexican labor. None of those people qualify for an employment-based visa. So when the hate mongers say, “Why can’t they wait in line? Why can’t they get a visa?” — there aren’t any visas to get! There’s no line to wait in! And that’s why everyone who knows this area of law says without comprehensive immigration reform you really aren’t going to solve any of these pop-up issues.

Joe Arpaio, sheriff of Maricopa County.

I am the elected sheriff. I don’t report to any governor, any legislature, any mayor and city council. I report directly to the people. And, remember, I’ve already retired — 32 years as a law enforcement guy. I don’t need this job. I’m not building a résumé to be the governor. I could have been the governor two times over. Everybody knows that. I just have a special link with the people I serve. The only reason I work 15 hours a day, seven days a week — and I’m not a young guy — is because I’m motivated by the people.

And when I go after a certain policy, I go full force, I don’t do it halfway. It’s controversial, but it doesn’t bother me; if people don’t like it, go vote for somebody else this year.

Phil Gordon, mayor of Phoenix.

We’ll look back and we’ll really regret the reputation that the sheriff’s actions and others had given this community that isn’t deserved. It is the voice of a few individuals. The sheriff can go into any city the sheriff wants with both his sworn officers and with posses designated by him, under the guise of crime suppression. Has done it in Phoenix a number of times, has done it in a suburb called Guadalupe, all predominantly Hispanic immigrant communities, poor social lower class. Sets up a press conference, brings in dogs, brings in helicopters, brings in SWAT teams, brings in horse patrols, and says that we are going after illegal immigrants in one sentence, and then the other sentence saying, no, we’re just going after criminals.

His crime suppression is really nothing more than crime sweeps targeting brown-skinned individuals. Stopping and arresting individuals in the middle of a block, for littering, for honking their horn too loud, for having broken tail lights, for riding a bike at night without a light, one case for driving in a car with the tread of a tire too low — pretenses to stop individuals who then have to prove that they’re here legally.

Al Garza, member of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, near the Arizona-Mexico border.

We’re all immigrants to some point. So my thing is rule of law. And I speak right from the, you know, I am Hispanic, of Mexican descent. We’re legal, and we’ve been legal, what, five generations.

I’m called “the Oreo.” It means that I’m brown on the outside and white on the inside. And “coconut” as well.

The Garza family especially have fought in wars. My grandfather in World War I, and he lost a brother. His son, my father, World War II. He lost two brothers. And I was in Vietnam, and I lost a cousin. So we’ve shed the blood for the United States. I am very proud of this country. We cannot afford any longer to not take the rule of law for what it’s really worth.

What I see wrong with illegal immigration is the fact that now they are going through the borders, completely unannounced, breaking the first law. Now [they have] to establish themselves in the form of documents. They look for a job. They look for a residence. They obtain fraudulent documents.

[When patrolling the border,] you bring a lounge chair in most cases, an umbrella, mosquito repellant, suntan lotion, things of this nature, water, plenty of water, a phone, a radio. Food, things of this sort.

If you’ve got a license to carry, you are welcome to bring a gun. Mexico has guns. And they also have machine guns. All we carry is a pistol.

Danny Ortega, lawyer, Phoenix.

In most cases, the way we’ve dealt with hate is not necessarily how I’d like to see it dealt with now. It’s taken somebody’s death. Take those little girls in that church in Alabama. It wasn’t till you got to that tragic point that people began to look within the rubble to try to come up with something that might prevent that from happening.

You would think that 400 deaths in the desert in one year, or close to 4,000 over several years, might get people to think about what it is we need to do as a country to support human rights. So what’s it going to take? I hope it’s not some tragic act of senseless violence that finally brings people to say: “Wait a minute, this isn’t right. That child or that man or that woman never should have died as a result of this.”

Jack Harris, chief of police, Phoenix.

We’ve had 100,000 Latinos marching right out in front of the police station here down to the capitol. It brings out a lot of the extremists on both sides. We have undercover people mixed into the crowds observing what’s going on. And the level of the rhetoric and the hatred is continuing to escalate.

And we’re very concerned that it may end up like the riots of the ’60s, where eventually somebody is going to step over the line. Many of these people who are showing up at these events are armed, carrying multiple weapons, and very, very hate-filled rhetoric.

The answers are never clear-cut. It’s never black and white. Everybody out of the country, everybody allowed in the country, those are not the answers. The answer is in the middle somewhere. And I’m very hopeful that following the election process that whoever the new president is will take on this topic and force us to come to a reasonable solution before we repeat history.

Anna Deavere Smith, an actress and playwright who is a professor at New York University.