“ILLEGAL, LIFE AND DEATH IN ARIZONA’S IMMIGRATION WAR ZONE”

By Terry Greene Sterling

I have been covering the immigration battles in Arizona for the last year and a half. This book was written after many, many hours in the trenches. This is the cover.

The book comes out in June, but you can buy it now here.

Please join me on this intimate journey. The people in the shadows want you to know their stories.

DID YOU EVER WANT TO READ THE TEXT OF ARIZONA’S IMMIGRATION LAW, SLATED TO TAKE EFFECT THIS SUMMER BARRING COURT CHALLENGES?

HERE IT IS.

HERE IS THE AMENDMENT.

HERE IS THE GOVERNOR’S  EXECUTIVE ORDER FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT TRAINING.

HERE IS VIDEO OF AUTHOR OF LAW INSTRUCTING POLICE ON “REASONABLE SUSPICION.”

You’ll note in the text that the law does not address border security.

Some Arizona schools have policemen on their campuses. The new immigration law, slated to go into effect in July if it is not stalled by court action or initiatives,  requires all police officers in the state to become immigration enforcers. If the police do not arrest people without papers they “reasonably suspect” of being in the country illegally, the law gives Arizona residents the right to sue the employers of the police agencies–which could be either the state, or a county, or cities and towns.

At taxpayer expense.

What effect does this have on Arizona schools, where Spanish speakers drop their kids off every day? Will the police officers be forced to ask the parents for papers?

School officials are grappling with this problem right now.

AN ARIZONA IMMIGRATION HOAX? QUESTIONS ARISE OVER SHOOTING OF PINAL COUNTY SHERIFF DEPUTY

A week after Arizona’s governor signed the toughest immigration law in the nation, SB 1070, a Pinal County Sheriff’s deputy claimed he was shot with an AK-47 type weapon in an ambush with five drug traffickers. Bullets whizzed, he said. The ambushers disappeared, even after a massive search by Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s deputies and other law-enforcement groups, like the Border Patrol. The suspects: drug traffickers from Sinaloa, Mexico.

The deputy, Louie Puroll,  was released from the hospital a few hours after he was admitted. He’d been grazed by either one or two bullets.  He’s not talking to the press.

Now at least one journalist, and a very good one at that, is calling the shooting into question.

And here’s  the latest update, from a rival newspaper, in response to the story questioning the shooting.

You be the judge.

LAWSUITS LAUNCHED AGAINST ARIZONA FOR IMMIGRATION LAW

I have been writing pretty regularly about Arizona’s new immigration law, SB 1070,  for The Daily Beast, and updating the galleys for my book, ILLEGAL, LIfe and Death in the Undocumented Underground, which is slated to be published in June. I regret that I have neglected this web site.

This new law is less than a week old, and already two lawsuits have been filed against Arizona over civil rights issues in the law. The Washington Post reports that the Justice Department might launch a legal protest as well. The Mayor of Phoenix promised to sue, but his city council didn’t back him up.

I want to post a series of photos really fast, just so you take a trip with me through the events of the last month.

The first picture was taken outside the funeral of rancher Robert Krentz. No one knows who killed him, but the highly politicized murder has been widely blamed on a faceless Mexican drug trafficker who crossed the border illegally. This caused an uproar for more secure borders, to which Janet Napolitano has repeatedly replied that yea, more can be done, but immigration is down at the border.

The second photo is of ranchers calling for border enforcement on the day SB 1070 sailed through the Arizona House of Representatives. The ranchers are flanked by Russell Pearce, who sponsored SB 1070, and J.D. Hayworth, who is running in the Senate primary against John McCain and supports the new law, which criminalizes about 460,000 undocumented immigrants for setting foot in Arizona and requires all law enforcement officers to enforce immigration laws. If they don’t enforce the laws, the cities and counties that employ them can be sued by Arizona residents.

Pearce is the fellow on the left, and Hayworth is on the right.

The rest of the pictures I shot were of various protestors. Some for the law, some against it. They were all demonstrating on  the grounds of the Arizona state capitol complex.

The photo below is of  people who support SB 1070 being interviewed by a reporter.

Here’s a placard I saw lying on the ground.

That’s all for today. More soon.

IN THE MIDST OF CRIPPLING BUDGET PROBLEMS, ARIZONA LEGISLATORS WILL VOTE VERY SOON ON AN EXPENSIVE BILL THAT WILL JAIL HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF MEXICANS FOR TRESPASSING IN ARIZONA AND FORCE POLICE TO BE IMMIGRATION COPS.

Earlier this week, I received an e-mail “alert” from a man named Eric Johnson, writing, as he put it, “for that Great American, Senator Russell Pearce.” Johnson wanted me to know that an immigration bill was zipping through the Arizona House of Representatives. The bill was, word-for-word, the same bill Russell Pearce had authored and successfully moved through the Arizona Senate a few weeks earlier.

I first ran into

Senator Russell Pearce last year, when he vowed at a press conference that he’d get his immigrant-trespassing bill passed in 2010. He called it the “safe neighborhoods” bill. It penalizes undocumented immigrants for setting foot in Arizona and turns cops into immigration enforcers.

True to his word, Pearce got a Senate Bill passed this year, and a similar House bill today sailed through the Arizona Legislature committee of the whole, and is set to be voted on tomorrow or later this week. It is called HB 2632. I sat in the balcony of the Arizona house today, surrounded by lobbyists who talked so loud it was hard to hear what the legislators said on the floor below us. I did notice Mexicans sitting with inscrutable expressions on their faces and a gaggle of yellow-shirted, Pearce fans dressed in yellow tee shirts.

I’d seen those shirts, and those faces, before.

Look at the pictures below, which I took during Pearce’s 2009 press conference.
Note three things.

First, note that Russell Pearce wears a yellow tee shirt

Second, note that his ally Sheriff Joe Arpaio stands nearby, and then takes the podium.

Third, note that the aging woman in yellow stands near a sign that says “illegal aliens” cost the state $400 million for uncompensated healthcare. I point out the sign because undocumented immigrants are banned from using state-funded healthcare.

The same lack of logic must have prompted Pearce to call his trespassing bill the “Safe Neighborhoods” bill — because critics say it would make neighborhoods less safe. It should, in fact, be called the Unsafe Neighborhoods bill.

Here’s why.

The proposed law, which should be voted on any day this week, will transform Arizona policemen into immigration enforcers, whether they like it or not, and these immigration cops will, like Sheriff Joe Arapio, neglect the solving of serious crimes, like rapes and murders, in order to arrest each and every undocumented immigrant in Arizona for “trespassing.”

Keep in mind that approximately 460,000 undocumented immigrants are thought to live in Arizona.

If the new immigration cops arrested even one-tenth of these men, women and children for trespassing on Arizona soil, the state would surely face expensive challenges in court because the immigration goons would almost certainly question, detain, and arrest people with brown skin who are American citizens. This of course, is already happening in Phoenix.
Beyond civil rights abuses, there’s the practical matter of, the expense of arresting 460,000 people in the face of severe budgetary problems.

Arizona faces the “second steepest budget decline” in the United States, according to The Arizona Republic.
Arizona’s leaders have already knocked more than 30,000 people (mostly little kids) off state-funded healthcare, sold state buildings and closed state parks and schools.

Yet those same budget slashers are set to vote this year on a largely unfunded law that would financially burden a state already crippled by the recession.

The promoters of the law say each immigrant will be forced to pay $500 and that will cover expenses.

But ask yourself whether the trespassers about to be deported are eagerly going to hand over $500.

Or if they even have such cash in the first place.

It’s not a practical solution.

Pearce is not a practical man, however, and he is not supported by practical men.

He is not supported by clear-headed conservatives or moderate Republicans. He is not supported by Democrats. He is not supported by the business community or the agricultural community or any other reasonable community.

He is supported instead, by national anti-migrant groups, a dwindling number of Arizonans who fear or hate Mexicans, the aging groupies dressed in yellow, and, finally, by Minutemen.

Or, at least a few Minutemen.

Pearce’s own son said at a hearing I attended last year that he is a Minuteman, and Pearce’s good friend and colleague in the senate, Al Melvin, judging from the last line on his resume, is also a Minuteman.

Minutemen aren’t just tea party gadflies on steroids. And they aren’t just retired military folks who’ve overstated illegal immigration threats so they can dress up in camouflage once again and drive around in quads and report to their command center about “illegals” invading America.

You may recall that a Minuteman splinter group was accused of slaughtering a nine-year-old child in Arivaca, Arizona. The trio says they are innocent, and await trial in Pima County Superior Court. According to police, they slaughtered he little girl and her dad in an effort to steal the dad’s marijuana stash so they could fund their operation to protect America from “illegals.”

Consider the logic of that plan.

Then consider the logic of Arizona legislators who just pleaded poverty and stripped tens of thousands of children off healthcare rolls and closed state parks and slashed school budgets and then turn around and vow to vote on a burdensome, expensive law that will mandate the arrest of 464,000 people for trespassing on Arizona soil.

What happened to all that concern about budget woes?

What happened to the logic?

I don’t have the answers to those questions.

You could get them from that Great American, Senator Russell Pearce, though, if you call him at the State Senate. Or, if you want, you could call Kirk Adams, who is the speaker of the Arizona House, the guy who just allowed the trespassing bill to pass through a committee so it could be voted on by the entire house, instead of keeping the bill in the committee and letting it die.

Or, maybe you could just call up a Minuteman.

TERRY GREENE STERLING: MEDITATIONS ON ILLEGAL  THE BOOK,  LIFE AND DEATH IN THE UNDOCUMENTED UNDERGROUND, WRITING, MINUTEMEN, AND GONGS.

I worked for over a year on what seemed to be a never-ending project,  the book about undocumented immigrants in the Phoenix area.

I reported like crazy. This picture  shows me reporting. Yep, you got it. The grey-haired woman with the notebook. I took a lot of notes. I translated from Spanish to English as I took notes. Then, at night, I went over all my reporting and then I closed my eyes and listened to Tibetan gong sounds on my iPhone.

Then the next day, I’d write. This picture below shows me writing. Or, at least, thinking about writing.

And this picture below shows me relaxing with my husband after I finished the book for real.

I relaxed for two weeks. You didn’t see me on these pages. You would have seen me in the Sonoran Desert, though, hiking around, looking for Mexican poppies and lupine.

It was my first real vacation in over a year.

The book won’t come out until August, so now  it’s time to write again. I’m working on a post about Minutemen. Stay tuned. I will be back really, really soon. Just as soon as I get a couple of documents.

And down the road, as we near publication dates, I will  redesign the website, too, so you will be able to meet the real-life characters in the book via video and podcasts. And, also, I really want to take polls. I want to see what you think about, say, Minutemen.

Would you like to read about them and their connections to highly placed politicos in Arizona?

I hope so, because that is the topic of my  next post.

Friends, I am in the middle of the last-minute revisions to my book about undocumented immigrants in Phoenix.

Until I finish in the next ten days or so,  I won’t be able to write much here.

The object below is a toilet paper rose.

Photo by Terry Greene Sterling

If  you can guess, via the comments section below, who generally makes these roses, and where, and why,  you are a very smart person. I dare you!

Yesterday, I drove around a suburb of Phoenix searching for a Oaxacan café that served chapulines, fried grasshoppers.

The store had closed. I was disappointed, because I  had wanted to write about people who eat chapulines for my book. Grasshoppers are eaten by indigenous Mexicans, and they’re a great source of protein.

I swear I’m not making this up,  but the very next day I met a source for an interview. As he walked in the room, he carried a little plastic tub full of fried, salted chapulines.  His dad had brought them up to Arizona from the Mexican state of Guerrero.  Here is a picture I took of the tub of grasshoppers.

Photo by Terry Greene Sterling

The man told me that female grasshoppers taste  better than male grasshoppers because female grasshoppers are fattier. This is a picture of a male and female grasshopper he picked out of the tub.

Photo by Terry Greene Sterling

“Eat one,” the man told me,  ”but first pull off the legs because they are like splinters and get caught in the throat.”

“OK,” I said.

I chose the guy grasshopper.

It took me a couple of tries, but I finally got the little fellow  in my mouth.

I forced myself to chew. The chapulín tasted clean, salty and crispy.

God, I love writing this book.