More deportees leads to ‘ICE Air’

Illegal immigrants board a plane at Tucson International Airport in July 2007. The immigrants were flown back to Mexico as part of a repatriation program.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – While U.S. airlines downsize and scrimp on amenities, one carrier is offering its passengers leather seats, ample legroom and free food. But frequent fliers probably don’t want a ticket on what may be the fastest growing “airline” serving Central America.

This carrier is run by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency responsible for finding and deporting undocumented immigrants. A crackdown on illegal immigration has led to a spike in deportations and the creation of a de facto airline to send the deportees home.

ICE Air

The air service, called Repatriate by air-traffic controllers, is known simply as ICE Air to agency employees. Its planes have headrests emblazoned with ICE’s name and seal. In-flight service is polite.

“For a lot of these immigrants, it has been a long journey to the U.S.,” said Michael J. Pitts, chief of flight operations for deportations and removals at ICE. “This is going to be the last impression they have of the United States. We want to provide good service.”

Pitts, a former military pilot, said ICE Air operates much like a commercial carrier, flying passengers to hub cities where they connect to international flights. But those hub cities – such as Mesa, and Alexandria, La., which are close to illegal-immigrant detention sites – are relatively obscure. And the final destinations are primarily in Latin America, including up to three flights daily to Guatemala City and two to Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Pitts also recently launched service to the Philippines, Indonesia and Cambodia.

In all, the U.S. government deports people to more than 190 countries. Outside of Mexico, ICE flew home 76,102 illegal immigrants in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, up from 72,187 last year and 50,222 two years ago.

Average bill is $620

ICE Air’s patrons are what the airline industry calls “nonrevenue passengers,” since Washington foots the bill at $620 a person on average for the one-way flight home. The agency now flies 10 aircraft, twice as many as last year, including leased and government jets.

From Kansas City, Pitts’ team coordinates with 24 ICE field offices and monitors all flights. Recently staffers tracked seven ICE Air flights to Central America on an electronic wall map. Three schedulers worked the phones and e-mailed frantically to place immigrants on future flights.

“We have 30 El Salvadoran aliens ready to be removed,” an official at an Arizona detention facility said by phone. Patty Ridley checked her roster and confirmed the seats on a flight scheduled to leave Mesa for San Salvador two weeks later.

Like mainstream carriers, ICE knows it gets more bang for the buck if it can fill every seat, so it doesn’t schedule any flight until it has a critical mass of deportees. “We are making a valiant attempt to overbook,” said Pitts. Sometimes passengers get bumped, he said, “to make room for priority cases.” Those might be convicted criminals who are wanted by their country or individuals eager to get home due to a family emergency.

Before dawn on a recent day, supervisor Rosemarie Williams gathered 13 crew members – unarmed contract security personnel who double as flight attendants – at a civilian airstrip to brief them on “RPN 742,” scheduled to depart at 9 a.m. from Laredo, Texas, to Guatemala City.

The swanky Boeing 737-800, leased from Miami Air International, had 172 brown leather seats and a single-class configuration.

Each passenger is entitled to 40 pounds of luggage, which is carefully labeled. The tag on a big, black duffel bag loaded onto the flight to Guatemala listed the following contents: microwave, toys, VCR and an electric saw. “We don’t charge them for bringing more because many passengers have only a couple of pounds to their name,” said Pat Reilly, an ICE spokeswoman. Most people trying to sneak into the U.S. carry only a backpack.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — While U.S. airlines downsize and scrimp on amenities, one carrier is offering its passengers leather seats, ample legroom and free food. But frequent fliers probably don’t want a ticket on what may be the fastest growing “airline” serving Central America.

This carrier is run by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency responsible for finding and deporting undocumented immigrants. A crackdown on illegal immigration has led to a spike in deportations and the creation of a de facto airline to send the deportees home.

The air service, called Repatriate by air-traffic controllers, is known simply as ICE Air to agency employees. Its planes have headrests emblazoned with ICE’s name and seal. In-flight service is polite.

“For a lot of these immigrants, it has been a long journey to the U.S.,” said Michael J. Pitts, chief of flight operations for deportations and removals at ICE. “This is going to be the last impression they have of the United States. We want to provide good service.”

Mr. Pitts, a former military pilot, said ICE Air operates much like a commercial carrier, flying passengers to hub cities where they connect to international flights. But those hub cities — such as Mesa, Ariz., and Alexandria, La., which are close to illegal-immigrant detention sites — are relatively obscure. And the final destinations are primarily in Latin America, including up to three flights daily to Guatemala City and two to Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Mr. Pitts also recently launched service to the Philippines, Indonesia and Cambodia.

In all, the U.S. government deports people to more than 190 countries. Outside of Mexico, ICE flew home 76,102 illegal immigrants in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, up from 72,187 last year and 50,222 two years ago.

ICE Air’s patrons are what the airline industry calls “non-revenue passengers,” since Washington foots the bill at $620 a person on average for the one-way flight home. The agency now flies 10 aircraft, twice as many as last year, including leased and government jets.

From Kansas City, Mr. Pitts’ team coordinates with 24 ICE field offices and monitors all flights. On a recent morning, staffers tracked seven ICE Air flights to Central America on an electronic wall map. Three schedulers worked the phones and emailed frantically to place immigrants on future flights.

“We have 30 El Salvadoran aliens ready to be removed,” an official at an Arizona detention facility said by phone. Patty Ridley checked her roster and confirmed the seats on a flight scheduled to leave Mesa, Ariz., for San Salvador two weeks later. Another scheduler, Dawnesa Williams, who previously worked as a corporate travel agent, coordinated the journey of an illegal immigrant from Bakersfield, Calif.

Like mainstream carriers, ICE knows it gets more bang for the buck if it can fill every seat, so it doesn’t schedule any flight until it has a critical mass of deportees. “We are making a valiant attempt to overbook,” said Mr. Pitts. Sometimes passengers get bumped, he said, “to make room for priority cases.” Those might be convicted criminals who are wanted by their country or individuals eager to get home due to a family emergency.

Before dawn on a recent day, supervisor Rosemarie Williams gathered 13 crew members — unarmed contract security personnel who double as flight attendants — at a civilian airstrip to brief them on “RPN 742,” scheduled to depart at 9 a.m. from Laredo, Texas, to Guatemala City. Of 128 deportees on the flight, six were female and three were in handcuffs.

The swanky Boeing 737-800, leased from Miami Air International, had 172 brown leather seats and a single-class configuration. Co-pilot Thomas Hall volunteered that the company is used to flying heavyweights, like former President Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush when they were campaigning. Miami Air wouldn’t discuss its specific clients, but its Web site touts “incomparable service” for corporations, sports teams and political candidates who “trust us to get them where they need to go, when they need to be there.”

“This is one of our newest planes,” said Mr. Hall.

At 8 a.m. two buses and two vans packed with immigrants pulled up alongside the plane. ICE agent Roland Pastramo boarded each vehicle, clutching a clipboard with passenger names. “Good morning,” he said loudly in Spanish, and the deportees returned the greeting. “Your flying time to Guatemala City will be 2.5 hours … . Watch your step. Good luck.”

Each passenger is entitled to 40 pounds of luggage, which is carefully labeled. The tag on a big, black duffel bag loaded onto the flight to Guatemala listed the following contents: microwave, toys, VCR and an electric saw. “We don’t charge them for bringing more because many passengers have only a couple of pounds to their name,” said Pat Reilly, an ICE spokeswoman. Most people trying to sneak into the U.S. carry only a backpack.

While security agents loaded the plane with the immigrants’ belongings, others frisked the passengers, who descended, one by one, from the bus with their hands behind their head. After a body pat, the agents inspected the passengers’ shoes, checked their mouths, released their arms and sent them on to the plane.

It was the maiden flight for many of the deportees. Safety procedures appeared on a video in Spanish; there was no movie.

Security agent Victoria Taylor, who is learning Spanish, encouraged passengers to lean their seats back “for more comfort.” A flight nurse (there is always one on board) distributed medication to those who required it, in accordance with directives from detention centers.

Halfway through the flight, security agents handed out box lunches: a bologna sandwich, potato chips, orange juice and a bag of carrots. When asked about the food quality, passenger Veronica Garcia grimaced and shook her head. Another passenger, Judy Novoa, nibbled at the edges of the sandwich and decided, “It’s OK.”

The passengers, who sat quietly or napped, said they had come to the U.S. hoping to work in Maryland, Massachusetts and Mississippi, among other places.

Ms. Garcia, a repeat customer, said she was just one hour outside Houston when her pickup truck was intercepted. Ms. Novoa, 20 years old, said she was arrested on a train near San Antonio. “I was willing to do any dignified job,” she said, explaining that she had paid $5,000 to be smuggled from Guatemala to the U.S.

A handful of passengers onboard had been arrested as they tried to exit the U.S. on their own volition.

Having built a house in his native village with dollars sent home from Florida over three years, pellet-factory worker Saul Benjamin decided it was time to return to Guatemala. “I wanted to be with my family,” said the father of two.

At the U.S-Mexico border, he planned to hop on a bus to Guatemala. But he said Mexican immigration authorities demanded a $500 payment in lieu of the required transit pass. He couldn’t afford to pay the bribe, so Mr. Benjamin said the Mexican agents handed him over to U.S. Border Patrol. All told, he said, he got stuck for a month in a detention facility. “If I had deported myself as planned, I would have been home weeks ago,” he said.

Homecomings can still be sweet, despite the circumstances. When the plane touched down in Guatemala, many passengers applauded. Exiting the airplane, some made the sign of the cross or kissed the ground.

A Guatemalan foreign-ministry official declared, “Welcome home,” and informed the arrivals that they had free access to a phone, a money-changing service and vans to the central bus station. “If you used a different name in the U.S., please give us your real name,” the official told the crowd. “There is no problem.”

SAN JUAN ALOTENANGO, Guatemala — In 2004, Ambrosio Carrillo made a perilous and illegal journey to the U.S. in search of opportunity. Earlier this year, he made the equally wrenching decision to return home.

Once a construction worker earning about $15 an hour in Maryland, Mr. Carrillo barely worked in the fall of 2007 as plentiful jobs evaporated. As winter set in, the illegal immigrant, who had mastered masonry, carpentry and drywalling in the U.S., didn’t land a job for two months. There was no money to send to his wife and three children in Guatemala.

So in January, Mr. Carrillo sliced open the green plastic piggy bank he’d bought at Wal-Mart and counted $3,100 in change and bills. “There was enough to buy a plane ticket home and ship my truck to Guatemala,” recalls Mr. Carrillo, 37 years old. Now back in San Juan Alotenango, a town of dirt streets and sporadic running water, he hauls fruit, firewood and recyclable metal for a few dollars a trip.

With his journey to the U.S. and back, Mr. Carrillo is helping to write the latest chapter in the American immigrant story. After years of growth, illegal immigration to the U.S. from Mexico and Central America has slowed sharply. At the same time, say demographers and immigrant advocates, more Latin American immigrants like Mr. Carrillo are apparently returning home. The impact of this shifting migration pattern is felt in the U.S. and beyond, in towns like San Juan Alotenango that depend to some degree on cash sent home by those working in the U.S.

It is difficult to track short-term changes in the population of the estimated 12 million immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally. But a new study by the Pew Hispanic Center, an independent think tank in Washington, D.C., estimates that annual undocumented arrivals from Mexico are down about 25 percent this year from 2005, to about 350,000. Undocumented arrivals from Central America have been halved since then, to about 120,000, according to the study, which is due to be released Thursday.

In part, the slowdown is a product of a Bush administration crackdown on illegal immigration, with factory raids that led to deportations and even criminal charges for thousands of undocumented workers. Meanwhile, the weakened economy has dealt a blow to these workers, many of them employed in the slumping construction sector.

The Census Bureau reported last month that the income of U.S. households headed by non-citizen foreigners dropped 7.3 percent in 2007 from the previous year, after rising 4.1 percent in 2006. Pew Hispanic says that among households headed by Central Americans, the drop in income has been in the double digits.

As a result, flows of money to Latin America from U.S.-based workers have slowed for the first time since the Inter-American Development Bank began tracking remittances in 2000. The rate of growth in remittances to Mr. Carrillo’s home country of Guatemala has slowed in each of the past four quarters. The bank estimates that in the last quarter of this year, remittances will fall for the first time.

Some 1.35 million Guatemalan citizens — 10 percent of the country’s population — live in the U.S., according to the Central American Institute of Social and Development Studies, an independent think tank in Guatemala. Some 3.5 million people back in Guatemala depend on these remittances to get by, the group says. Remittances are the top foreign-exchange earner for Guatemala, at $4.12 billion in 2007, ahead of coffee, sugar and other exports.

Such income fuels everything from construction and appliance sales to spending on services. When the remittances shrink, “the first things to go out the window are education and health care — things that determine a family’s long-term earnings potential,” says Robert Meins, a remittances specialist at the Inter-American Development Bank.

An immigrant exodus wouldn’t be unprecedented. As many as one-third of the nearly 30 million foreigners who arrived in the U.S. between the Civil War and World War I returned to their native countries. Arrivals from Latin America also ebb and flow, with the influx to the U.S. last slackening during the 2001-02 recession.

San Juan Alotenango, an agricultural town of about 20,000 people, sits in a green valley bounded by two volcanoes. The average daily wage for farmhands is less than $10. When a relative moves to the U.S., families get a big boost in their standard of living. When the U.S. economy begins heaving, these families feel the effects.

Maria Felipa Cojolon said that her husband, Isidro, regularly sent home $2,000 a month two years ago from Atlanta. In recent months, the restaurant worker hasn’t managed to send even $800 a month. Standing in the skeleton of a two-story house whose construction has slowed, Mrs. Cojolon said: “Until he completes the house, my husband hopes to hang on” in the U.S.

A few blocks away, down a rutted road, Ambrosio Carrillo stood outside his family’s one-room shack on a recent afternoon, recounting how he tried to make it in America.

He went, he said, to secure a better education for his kids and perhaps purchase land for them. With only three years of schooling and a job at a coffee-processing plant, he didn’t see success in San Juan Alotenango. “We didn’t go hungry,” he says, but added: “I thought I could give my children a better future by going to America.”

Two cousins were thriving in the U.S. One of them was prepared to help finance Mr. Carrillo’s journey. The fee charged by a coyote, or smuggler, was 42,000 Guatemalan quetzales, or about $5,700 — including the overland journey from Guatemala to Mexico to Los Angeles and then a flight to Baltimore. Mr. Carrillo’s family made a downpayment of about one-third of the tab before he set out. With interest, the total cost of the trip would double to nearly $10,000.

On April 26, 2004, Mr. Carrillo joined about 30 Guatemalans, as well as several El Salvadorans and Hondurans, for a harrowing journey to the U.S. In the Arizona desert one night, he says, a U.S. Border Patrol ambushed and apprehended some in his traveling party. Mr. Carrillo says that during the raid he lost much of the canned food he was carrying, and says he wandered three more days without food. Cactus needles punctured his legs and arms. His swollen feet turned raw. Still, he recalls, he helped carry injured companions and children.

After six days in the desert, Mr. Carrillo and a dozen migrants crammed into a van that picked them up on the side of a country road. Once in Los Angeles, the smugglers contacted Mr. Carrillo’s family in Guatemala to arrange the deposit of another payment to the coyote’s Guatemalan bank account. Two days later, Mr. Carrillo was en route to Baltimore. There, his cousin took him to a two-bedroom, one-bath apartment in Hyattsville, Md., a suburb of Washington, D.C., that he would share with 11 other immigrants.

In 2004, construction was booming in Washington and its suburbs. Mr. Carrillo paid a document vendor $80 for a Social Security card with his name and a fabricated number. He was soon at work. “The boss gave me a uniform and a hard hat,” he says, brandishing a gray and white T-shirt with the company’s name, Pat’s Renovation LLC. A company representative couldn’t be located; a telephone number associated with Pat’s Renovation is no longer in service.

“I started as a ‘laborer,’ making $9 an hour,” says Mr. Carrillo, using one of the English words that leavened an interview otherwise conducted in Spanish. After tax and Social Security deductions, Mr. Carrillo says his take-home pay was about $400 a week, more than a dozen times what he earned back home. He bought a 1998 Nissan Sentra for $425.

Mr. Carrillo gradually learned English and skills such as tiling and carpentry. His hourly wage climbed to $11, he says, then $12. For the first two years, he paid off his debt to the coyote and sent his family about $200 every two weeks. Later, he says, he was able to send $300 or $400.

About $40 each month went for secondary school for his two older kids. Guatemalans who want to continue their childrens’ schooling beyond the primary level typically have to pay for private education.

Some weekends, Mr. Carrillo earned extra cash by doing landscaping on an 11-acre estate in affluent Howard County, Md. Reached by phone, the homeowner, Nura, asked that her last name be omitted. “We hired seven Americans who weren’t up to the job,” she said. “Then we found Ambrosio. He showed up on time and took his work seriously,” pulling weeds, cutting fallen branches and spreading mulch. At lunchtime, she said, he was eager to practice his English.

On Sundays, Mr. Carrillo sometimes played soccer with other undocumented immigrants at a field near his apartment complex. In 2006 — by now making $12 an hour and feeling confident about his job prospects — he sold his Nissan and paid $2,000 for a green 2000 Ford Ranger.

Back home, Mr. Carrillo’s family still lived in the shack with sugar-cane stick walls, tin roof, earth floor and no refrigerator. His wife, Josefina, washed clothes at a public tank a few blocks away.

But his family could afford more now. Mrs. Carrillo bought herself four gold-tooth implants. For their 17-year-old daughter, Miriam, she purchased two small gold hoops. Sons Byron, 15, and Jose Fernando, 11, received new shirts and dress shoes. “We could afford red meat,” Mrs. Carrillo said on a recent Saturday. “Not just frijolitos (little beans).”

Mr. Carrillo phoned home several times a week. Sometimes he called in the wee hours of the night and sounded like he had been drinking, Mrs. Carrillo says. Mr. Carrillo doesn’t dispute this. “It was the sadness of being away from the family,” his wife said.

By 2007, fortunes were beginning to turn for Mr. Carrillo and other illegal immigrants.

That spring, the U.S. mortgage crisis began taking shape and the construction sector started contracting. In July, Congress defeated a bill, supported by President George W. Bush, that would have put millions of illegal immigrants on the path to legalization. The next month, the Department of Homeland Security stepped up enforcement with raids that Mr. Carrillo and his roommates tracked on Univision, the Spanish-language television network.

At a construction site one Monday morning that summer, Mr. Carrillo and a dozen other workers were informed that Pat’s Renovation had received notices — known as “no match” letters — indicating that the laborers’ Social Security numbers weren’t valid. At first, the contractor switched to cash payments. But about three weeks later, Mr. Carrillo says, the boss told them he would have to discontinue this practice.

Mr. Carrillo began applying for jobs at other companies. As he recalls it, they said: “No good Social Security number, no job. Sorry.”

He began hustling for day jobs, standing outside a 7-Eleven store with dozens of other immigrants. He worked part-time two or three days a week. “There was too much competition,” he recalls.

Back home the effects were immediate, Mrs. Carrillo says. Meat was off the menu. Mrs. Carrillo says she had to borrow to make monthly school payments. There were no new clothes for the children. In a tense phone exchange, Mrs. Carrillo accused her husband of sacrificing his family in exchange for a new woman in the U.S.

“It wasn’t that I had another woman,” Mr. Carrillo says. “I simply didn’t have work.”

Through the fall and winter of 2007, Mr. Carrillo said, he had no money at all to send to his family. On the worst days, the migrant says, he cried in despair. He said that finally, after two months without a day of work, he called his wife and told her: “Better to eat poverty in my family’s company than alone.” She told him to come home.

That’s when he ripped into the piggy bank. Some of the $3,100 went toward a passport he obtained at the Guatemalan embassy. He bought a $330 one-way ticket home from Washington on Taca airlines. He spent $1,100 to ship his truck home. Another several hundred dollars paid pending rent and bills in the U.S., he says.

On Jan. 26, he landed in Guatemala with $600 in cash and a bag loaded with a new television, a DVD/VCR and a music system. A month later, his Ford Ranger arrived. With the truck and a cellphone, he began an independent transport business.

He has hauled carrots, building materials, scrap metal. On a recent day, he got about $10 — minus his costs for fuel — to haul avocados to the nearby tourist center of Antigua. A few weeks ago, he says, his truck was impounded by a traffic cop after he got in an accident. He says he had to pay a bribe to get it back.

“With the truck, at least we can eat,” he says.

Work has been sparse. Mrs. Carrillo says the family is about $200 in arrears on school payments for their daughter and older son. Their 17-year-old, Miriam, says she still hopes to graduate from high school this year and enter a vocational college to become a dental technician. Jose Fernando, the Carrillos’s youngest son, doesn’t have his school uniform, which costs about $8.

To pass the days without work, Mr. Carrillo watches TV or plays soccer. Some nights he drinks beer with his buddies.

The U.S. remains on his mind. Not long ago, he placed a long-distance call to Nura, the homeowner in Howard County, Md., to make sure she was pleased with the person he had recommended to replace him. On a recent Sunday, surrounded by his three children, he said: “If I could get the right papers — a visa — I would return.”

Arizona is at the heart of what many say is the biggest, angriest storm over immigration to hit the U.S. in nearly a century.

Efforts to combat illegal immigration from Mexico and Latin America are popping up across the state, fueled in part by an influx of immigrants of another sort: Americans from the North and East.

The collision of these two groups has helped turned Arizona into a laboratory for new ways to crack down on illegal immigrants. Employers here can lose their licenses if they hire undocumented workers. English is now the state’s official language. And the latest idea being floated in the state legislature would bar U.S. citizenship to babies born to illegal immigrants.

Immigration has become one of the most hotly contested issues heading into Tuesday’s presidential primaries. Arizona Sen. John McCain was an architect of the defeated U.S. Senate bill last year that included a guest-worker program and a pathway to legal status for illegal immigrants. He is now the Republican party’s front-runner, but the issue has hurt his standing among some voters. Among the remaining Democrats, both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton support comprehensive immigration reform.

Tensions are palpable in greater Phoenix, home to two-thirds of the state’s population. Joe Arpaio, the Maricopa County headline-grabbing sheriff whose jurisdiction includes Phoenix, recently unveiled a hotline for citizens to report suspected illegal immigrants. The hotline is advertised on the side of the sheriff’s vehicles with a big red “Do Not Enter” sign and the word “Illegally” scrawled over it.

Mr. Arpaio has also given his deputies new authority to arrest illegal immigrants in the course of duty — taking on a job normally reserved for federal agents. In the past year, he says they have arrested hundreds of people as a result.

The sheriff’s actions have turned him into a household name in the Latino community. Many say they avoid leaving the house except to go to work or to buy groceries, for fear of arrest. Spanish-language radio and television report frequently on locations where deputies appear to be stopping drivers. In some extreme cases, people are crossing back over the border to Mexico. “Isn’t it great to spread fear so they follow the law,” said Mr. Arpaio in an interview.

Politicians and law-enforcement officials say they are responding to the sentiment expressed by residents like Bill Seaber. Mr. Seaber moved to Phoenix from Pittsburgh about a decade ago to settle a community called Paradise Peak West. “We’re being overrun by illegals,” Mr. Seaber says. “We need to do whatever it’s going to take to get rid of them.”

Hostility toward immigrants has waxed and waned throughout U.S. history. At the turn of the 20th century, restrictionists denounced Italian and Eastern European immigrants as crime-prone, diseased and unable to assimilate. After isolationist sentiments flared during World War I, nativists in Congress pressured President Warren G. Harding into signing the first immigration Quota Act in 1921. The law effectively ended the open-door policy that had allowed millions of foreigners to settle in the U.S. in the previous decades. The National Origins Act of 1924 further stymied the flow, and the impact lasted for decades — the stanched flow of immigrants to the U.S. did not pick up again until the 1960s.

Today’s debate is partly a reaction to the fact that the U.S. is now home to more than 35 million immigrants, an all-time high in absolute numbers, scholars say. The density of the foreign-born population — almost 13 percent of the total — is approaching the 15 percent peak reached in the last massive wave of immigration from the 1880s to 1920s, according to scholars who study immigration. “In the last two years nativism has become as intense as it was during its last peak, the 1920s,” says Gary Gerstle, an immigration historian at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.

The current wave of immigration has reached pockets of the country untouched by immigration for decades, and the fact that a huge number of the immigrants — 12 million — are here illegally further inflames passions.

Nationally, more than 1,500 pieces of legislation were introduced in state houses last year related to illegal immigration, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Coming from all but four states, 244 of them became laws — three times as many as were passed in 2006. Arizona is one of the top states in terms of enacted laws last year, with a total of 13. The proposals typically tackle employment, law enforcement, drivers’ licenses and public benefits. Many of them are facing legal challenges; others are yet to be enforced.

Perched on Mexico’s border with the U.S., Arizona was long accustomed to the presence of Spanish speakers who moved back and forth between the porous borders. But the harsh desert terrain along its 340-mile-long border meant that most illegal immigrants tended to cross over the Texas or California border instead. Arizona only became ground zero in the immigration debate after the federal government began beefing up enforcement along the other two states in the 1990s. Today, Arizona is considered to be the main passageway for Latin Americans sneaking into the U.S.

For years, most undocumented workers just passed through Arizona on the way to other destinations. But as the economy boomed, many chose to stay in the bourgeoning Valley of the Sun, as the Phoenix area is known to locals. They were drawn by cheap housing and job opportunities fueled in part by the arrival of Americans from other states. All told, the population of greater Phoenix grew at the rate of 18,000 a month between 1990 and 2000, adding more than two million people in a decade, to reach 3.1 million, according to the Census Bureau. Today, Phoenix is the fifth-largest city in the country.

Over time, the newcomers settled into an uneasy coexistence. Arizona residents were inundated with a steady stream of news about migrants dying in the desert, border patrol chases on highways and illegal immigrants held hostage by smugglers in drop houses. In day-to-day life, Latino immigrants and their children became increasingly visible — in stores, schools and hospital emergency rooms. Arizona’s foreign-born population surged to 900,000 in 2005 from about 270,00 in 1990, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. More than half are believed to be illegal immigrants.

“We’re a border state that has always had Mexicans,” says Arizona state historian Marshall Trimble. But, he adds, “a lot of these people who moved here in the last few years are uncomfortable when they see so many folks who are brown-skinned and speak another language.”

A particularly rancorous part of the debate involves the question of whether illegal immigrants are a burden on the state’s schools, health-care system and other public services. Dueling economic-impact surveys have done little to settle the argument. Some researchers say immigrants’ contributions outweigh their cost because they help stimulate the economy with their labor and by consuming goods and services. Others say unauthorized workers depress the wages of legal workers, especially among low-skilled laborers.

Much of the recent legislation has addressed economic concerns. Proposition 200, for example, a ballot measure passed in 2004, halted all nonfederally mandated assistance, such as state health care, to illegal immigrants.

“Immigrants who had been contributing to the economy by doing jobs no one else wanted felt under attack,” says Joe Rubio, lead organizer for the Phoenix Industrial Areas Foundation, a coalition of local faith-based groups that fights nativist measures.

In 2006, about three-quarters of all Arizonans voted in favor of four more ballot measures aimed at illegal immigrants, including one that bans undocumented immigrants from receiving in-state residency tuition for college and other benefits. Another denies an award of punitive damages in any civil court to an illegal immigrant.

Republican state legislator Russell Pearce, who speaks of an “invasion” from Mexico, has launched at least a dozen bills to combat illegal immigration.

“In the face of federal government inaction, Arizona has become a laboratory for how to deal with illegal immigration,” says Janet Napolitano, the state’s governor, referring to a series of failed federal immigration reforms and lack of enforcement at the border.

The nonstop legal volleys reflect the immigrant-related conflict raging across the state. In a working-class neighborhood in central Phoenix, a handyman named Ken Adams, 40 years old, says, “At one time Mexicans were a minority. Not anymore.” For a supervising job in construction, for example, “you have to speak Spanish to deal with employees who just speak Spanish,” Mr. Adams says.

Mr. Adams and his wife, Suzi, are home-schooling their two daughters, 13 and 14, partly because they believe the quality of education has deteriorated due to the influx of Spanish speakers. Ms. Adams remembers attending the school across the street from their home when the student body was overwhelmingly white. Now, like most schools in the area, the students are mostly Latino. “My biggest problem is the culture thing,” she says. “They come here and disrespect our culture … by not learning English.”

It is the future Hispanic face of the state that has propelled many anti-immigrant forces into action. At Lela Alston Elementary School, which opened six years ago, 95 percent of the 380 students are Hispanic and 78 percent come from homes where English isn’t the dominant language. Virtually all the children are entitled to free meals because their families live at or below the poverty line.

In one kindergarten class, Carrie Bergum teaches 22 students — only one is not Hispanic — how to read. “They come to us not knowing anything,” says Ms. Bergum, but “most of the kids pick up English within two months, some of them in less time.” On a recent afternoon, almost all the kindergarteners, including newcomer Michael Garcia, spelled cat, box and jet correctly. “We winners!” declared the 6-year-old boy, flashing a grin. Last year, the elementary school in the heart of a Latino neighborhood won a “highly performing school” designation from the state as a result of its students’ performance on standardized tests and attendance record.

Kent Scribner is the superintendent of Phoenix’s Isaac School District, where 95 percent of students are Latino. He says the immigrant crackdown is driving some families out of state. “We have requests for student transcripts from schools in Utah, Colorado, Texas and New Mexico,” he says, adding that about 5 percent of these students didn’t return for the second semester of the school year that began last month.

Diana and Adrian Arce moved to Phoenix 15 years ago from Guadalajara, Mexico, to “seek a better future for our children,” she says. Her husband held a steady job as a painter, and she cleaned houses. They saved enough to make a down payment on a house and buy two cars. Two years ago, their eldest daughter graduated from high school and won a full scholarship to a community college.

After the employer-sanctions bill passed last year, Mr. Arce lost his job, which paid $14 an hour. He scrambled to find another job until finding one that paid only $7.50. Because he is an unauthorized worker, “the employer knew he would take the job,” says Mrs. Arce.

When the proposition banning undocumented students from paying in-state tuition went into effect last year, the Arces’ daughter lost her scholarship and had to withdraw from college because the family can’t afford to pay the $360 out-of-state fee per semester. Their second daughter, who is 19, works at a fast-food chain and has postponed plans to attend college. Their 18-year-old son is hoping to get a soccer scholarship at a private university. Only their youngest daughter is a U.S. citizen.

Mrs. Arce, who earns $12 to $15 an hour cleaning houses for “puros americanos who treat me very well,” says families for whom she has worked more than a decade recently asked whether she is here legally. “I tell them I am a citizen,” she says. “Or they’ll fire me immediately.”

On her way to work recently, Mrs. Arce conferred with her friends by cellphone about where Mr. Arpaio’s deputies might be stationed and changed her route accordingly. The family restricts its outings to a minimum, she says. “We used to like visiting the park and the library,” says Mrs. Arce. In the last year, “everything has changed,” says Mrs. Arce. “We’re thinking of moving to another state but it’s hard to start from scratch.”

LOS ANGELES — Hundreds of thousands of Hispanics who responded to a massive campaign to seek citizenship and vote in 2008 have created a backlog of applications that the government has indicated it can’t process before the election, undercutting the voting power of Latinos.

Univision, the largest Spanish-language network in the U.S., launched the campaign last year along with Spanish-language newspapers and Latino grass-roots groups. With the slogan, “Ya Es Hora! Ciudadania!” (It’s About Time! Citizenship!), the campaign was integrated into local newscasts and aired in public-service announcements throughout the day in cities across the country.

Nearly 1.2 million green-card holders, the vast majority Latino, applied to become naturalized citizens in 2007, surpassing the campaign’s target of one million. All told, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services received 1.4 million applications for naturalization in the fiscal year ended October 2007, nearly double the volume received for the previous fiscal year. In June and July alone, the volume of applications jumped 360 percent relative to the same months in 2006.

Many applicants were motivated by a desire to participate in the political process amid a rancorous national debate over immigration. Anticipation of a fee increase for the naturalization application, to $675 from $400, was also a factor. But the immigration agency hadn’t anticipated the “avalanche” of applications that ensued, according to a USCIS spokesman. Legal residents who applied midyear are likely to wait 18 months before their forms are processed; the average processing time is normally six months. Applications are processed on a first-come, first-served basis.

The processing jam stands to damp the electoral potential of Hispanics, a bloc that has become more politically active, as seen two years ago at massive street protests over immigration legislation. Hispanics represent a crucial constituency in states such as Florida, Arizona and Nevada.

At a hearing Thursday of the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on immigration, USCIS Director Emilio Gonzalez outlined how the agency aimed to address the backlog by adding staff. However, Mr. Gonzalez made no commitment that increased staffing would significantly reduce the time it took to process applications. “This surge (in applications) will have a serious impact on application processing times for the next couple of years,” he said.

He said the agency couldn’t jeopardize national security or the integrity of the process. Hiring, training and obtaining security clearance for immigration employees takes months. The agency’s pending naturalization applications stood at nearly 927,000 in October 2007, a 92 percent increase from the end of the previous fiscal year in October 2006.

Latino groups and unions involved in the citizenship drive say they first notified the government of their plans to encourage increased Hispanic citizenship in November 2006. More recently, the advocacy groups have urged the government to expedite processing to ensure that all qualified applicants who filed last year are sworn in as U.S. citizens by July 4.

“The price of USCIS’s failed leadership and poor planning is the disenfranchisement of those immigrants who have played by the rules,” said Eliseo Medina, executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union, one of the groups that spearheaded the campaign.

In recent years, USCIS has faced criticism for delays in processing applications involving naturalization and worker and family visas. Its challenges are exacerbated by mandatory background checks by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in which all applicants’ names are run through several databases to ensure they don’t have a criminal background or are otherwise ineligible for naturalization.

Nearly nine million green-card holders, or legal permanent residents, are eligible to become U.S. citizens. About 55 percent are immigrants of Latin American origin. A desire to have a greater say in the debate over immigrants’ rights is likely to push more Latinos to participate in this election. “Latino newcomers see naturalization as a critical step toward making their voices heard in our national debate on immigration,” said Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund, NALEO, in his testimony Thursday.

In response, a USCIS spokesman later said “the agency is committed to ensuring fair and professional service to the hundreds of thousands of men, women and children who seek our services every month.”

Hispanics responded strongly to the public-service campaign, queuing up to fill out citizenship forms at churches, community centers and other places across the country. With lines wrapping around entire blocks in cities like Los Angeles, hundreds of people were turned away and asked to return another day. A hotline established by NALEO was flooded with calls.

Miguel Quintero, a roofer who queued up to apply for citizenship in June, was invited to a USCIS office two months later to be fingerprinted. But, “I haven’t heard anything since,” says Mr. Quintero, who moved to the U.S. from Mexico in 1972. “I want the chance to vote on things that impact my community.” Celia Amador, a retired assembly-line worker in Los Angeles, said that she is worried that she won’t get her citizenship in time for the election. “What I most want is to cast a vote,” she said.

In most states, deadlines for registering to vote are between 21 to 30 days prior to the election. Newly naturalized citizens can register as late as seven days before the vote in California and 10 days in New York.

There were 9.3 million Hispanics registered to vote in the last presidential election. NALEO projects that, as of this year’s general election, there will be at least 11.3 million registered. It expects at least 9.2 million will cast ballots, up from 7.6 million in 2004, due to the mobilizing impact of the immigration debate, the vigorous efforts by parties and candidates to reach Latinos, and the initiatives of non-partisan groups to energize Latino voters.

The Univision-led drive to engage Hispanics in civic life moved recently into its next phase ahead of the primaries. Called “Ve Y Vota” (Go and Vote), it seeks to encourage Hispanics who are already citizens to register to vote and turn out at the polls. To facilitate that process, organizations participating in the campaign have positioned volunteers outside swearing-in ceremonies so that new citizens can immediately register to vote. A toll-free bilingual hotline provides people with ABCs of the electoral process.

AMADO — Valarie James looks for art in the desert. On a recent evening stroll with her three dogs, she gathered up a soiled bandage, a discolored hand-stitched cloth and ripped jeans.

She recognized it all as items abandoned by people sneaking into the U.S. on foot.

“For most everybody, this is trash,” says Ms. James, a 53-year-old artist who maintains a collection of migrant artifacts, mostly belongings discarded by illegal border crossers here. “You can see the migrant’s journey in these jeans,” she says, pointing to the holes made in them by cactus needles in the Sonoran desert.

Ms. James, an art teacher, collects all sorts of stuff on her desert treks. She treats with care the Tweety Bird backpacks, tattered hand-embroidered cloths and faded photographs she finds half-buried in dry creek beds or hanging stiffly on trees. Some discards are literary; for example, an anthology of Shakespeare plays and the “Diary of Anne Frank,” both in Spanish. Other things, ranging from bandages to binoculars, are more ordinary. “It’s like the pilgrims’ journey,” Ms. James says.

Litter left by illegal immigrants has long been a nuisance, but lately it has become a particular burden for Arizona. Tighter enforcement on well-worn migrant routes from Mexico into Texas and California in the ’90s made Arizona the main gateway for illegal immigrants. Now, new high-tech surveillance towers and beefed-up patrols along the Arizona border are forcing migrants to take even more circuitous routes to reach their destinations.

The longer the journey, the more baggage immigrants carry — and discard — along the way. During the three- to four-day journey, migrants toss off food containers, blankets and other items to lighten their load. They drop other belongings on the trail when trying to elude the border patrol.

The Bureau of Land Management estimates that each migrant dumps eight pounds of trash. In 2006, the agency and its partners in southern Arizona collected more than 300,000 pounds of migrant refuse in the 100 miles north of the border.

Immigration was already an emotional issue in Arizona. Litter is making things worse. Ranchers, hikers and environmentalists all bemoan the “migrant trash,” as an eyesore and a threat to desert wildlife and vegetation.

So-called staging areas, where migrants change into clean clothes and wait for rides at the end of their crossing, become “hazardous-waste zones,” says Roger DiRosa, manager of the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge.

For Arizona residents as far as 30 miles north of the Mexican border, migrant trash is a daily annoyance. “I can’t stand the mess,” says Dick Riester, who typically returns home from his mountain hikes hauling a 40-pound garbage bag stuffed with plastic water bottles, backpacks and other things he finds on migrant trails.

Ms. James first encountered migrant trash in 2004, on the open range across the road from her ranch. As she was walking her dogs, she tripped on an abandoned bag. In it, she found two infant dresses, a little girl’s birth certificate and a Johnson & Johnson “No Mas Lagrimas” (“No More Tears”) shampoo bottle. Next to the bag was a set of women’s clothing.

“What happened to this woman and her child?” she wonders. “Did they stagger to the nearby road? Were they picked up by the border patrol? Or, are they living somewhere in the U.S.?” She made a candle-lit shrine to the unknown mother and child in an unused building on her spread.

As she encountered more castaway items, her collection grew. Neighbors and friends started giving her things, too, including a tiny crocheted baby mitten stuck with cactus needles.

Today, a makeshift gallery on Ms. James’s ranch holds her large collection. In the middle of the room sits a pile of 30 rolled-up blankets. In one corner, Ms. James keeps dozens of children’s backpacks — most of them with familiar logos — Scooby-Doo, Barbie, Batman. A medicine table features acetaminophen tablets, tubes of antiseptic cream and rubbing alcohol. Most of the labels are in Spanish, including one for an herbal remedy to treat snakebite. Among the display of shoes, sneakers and boots, a man’s black leather loafer stands out. Tucked inside are several pages from “Hamlet,” in which Shakespeare’s tragic hero ponders his own mortality.

“Was he a teacher?” Ms. James wonders.

Ms. James has washed and restored many items, including fine embroidered cloths. But she has left many items exactly as she encountered them, including a stiff, rolled-up child’s leather jacket.

Bibles and other books abound. Birth certificates and ID cards adorn a wall. There are airline and bus tickets, and deportation documents. Inside one wallet is a bundle of Florida business cards, job contacts, she figures. A message in Spanish — “Give it all you got so you can return quickly” — was written on the back of a family photo. A child’s drawing depicts the journey many illegal immigrants expect, starting at a hostel on the Mexican border and ending at a perfect little house with a well-tended lawn.

Ms. James has encountered migrants themselves, often on the verge of collapse or hobbling along on blistered feet. “For those of us who live close to the border, the humanitarian crisis is not an abstraction,” says the artist. Each year, hundreds of migrants perish in the desert. In 2005, a migrant woman died of dehydration in the arms of her son less than half a mile from Ms. James’s house.

Ms. James was inspired to make three life-size sculptures of mothers to honor the dead migrants. In collaboration with sculptors Antonia Gallegos and Deb McCullough, she created, “Las Madres: No Mas Lagrimas,” which have been on display for more than a year at Pima Community College outside Tucson, where Ms. James teaches. Each sculpture is made from jeans and other articles found in the desert. Each mother’s arms are crossed over her heart and the eyes are closed in contemplation.

A separate exhibition of Ms. James’s art features a series of open wooden boxes, or “assemblages of the journey,” which incorporate items left behind by migrants. Ms. James curated the show at El Ojito Springs Center for Creativity in Tucson and it also includes mixed-media installations and photographs by other border artists.

Many people react strongly — and not all positively — to the assemblage of “junk” art. Gallery owner Randy Ford says the exhibit hasn’t been as well attended as he had expected. He believes area residents are tired of the immigration issue.

One visitor, Ursula Hollis, said migrants have ruined the pristine mountains near her home in Sierra Vista. “When somebody told me they see hopes and dreams in there, I laughed. To me trash is trash.”

Later, however, Ms. Hollis recalled that she had saved some immigrant trash herself — pictures and letters from children to their migrant father, which she had found in the desert and stashed in a drawer. “This young man and his children touched my heart,” says Mrs. Hollis. She mailed the belongings to Ms. James.

LAS VEGAS — The nation’s heated debate over immigration is headed to television advertising, in the form of a business-funded campaign that will tout the benefits of legalizing illegal workers and try to counter hardening rhetoric on immigration.

The campaign is spearheaded by Lionel Sosa, a media strategist who is credited with delivering nearly half of the Hispanic vote to President Bush in the previous presidential race.

On Tuesday, Mr. Sosa gathered here representatives from the construction, lodging, agricultural and banking sectors, as well as from churches, grass-roots groups and both political parties, to review the ads and finalize their strategy.

Mr. Sosa says he has raised $25 million for the campaign from one group he didn’t identify. His independent nonprofit organization — Mexicans and Americans Thinking Together, or Matt.org — plans to match that with other contributions from business interests that benefit from immigrant labor, he says. His long-term goal is to invest $100 million in a national ad campaign, though he acknowledges that is a tall order in a presidential election year.

“The anti-immigrant groups have smashed all of us who back immigration reform. It’s time to respond,” Mr. Sosa said in an interview. “Americans have to see why it’s in our interest to make these workers legal.”

Taking the group’s immigration message to the airwaves has risks, however — particularly if it sets off a well-funded, anti-illegal-immigration TV campaign from the other side of the issue. Indeed, on hearing of Mr. Sosa’s initiative, Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which calls for restricting all immigration, said that his group and its partners plan a campaign of their own. FAIR, which has 100,000 paid members, lobbied fiercely to defeat the Senate immigration bill this past spring.

“We are in the process of developing ads to try to educate Americans about the negative impacts that immigration has on wages and working conditions for certain segments of the American labor force,” Mr. Stein said. He declined to disclose the timetable or funding sources for such an effort.

Anti-illegal-immigration groups argue that undocumented immigrants are a burden on U.S. social services, education and health care and contend that they undermine U.S. wages and culture.

Mr. Sosa, 68 years old, in 1980 founded the agency Sosa Bromley Aguilar, which specialized in advertising to Hispanic consumers, selling it in 1990. Matt.org — based in Mr. Sosa’s hometown of San Antonio — employs three advertising strategists who worked with him at the agency. Among them is Cesar Martinez, who in 2002 created ad campaigns targeting Hispanics for Jeb Bush’s Florida gubernatorial campaign and Rick Perry’s Texas governor’s race.

Mr. Sosa said he plans to launch the immigration ads on TV nationally after the presidential conventions this summer.

Among those at the Las Vegas gathering was J. Allen Carnes, president of the Texas Vegetable Association, who has testified before Congress on immigration issues. In the past two seasons, Mr. Carnes has lost more than $600,000 worth of crops, he says, because he couldn’t secure enough workers. “Every year the shortage becomes worse and worse. If we continue down this path the agricultural industry in Texas as we know it will no longer exist,” he said. According to the Texas Produce Association, half of the fruits and vegetables being shipped in Texas are already being grown across the border.

Until now, business interests have mainly lobbied legislators and their staffs in Washington to press for legalizing undocumented workers. But some businesses are reshaping their strategies, responding to the collapse of a Senate bill last spring, the introduction of state ordinances to punish businesses that hire undocumented workers, and emotive rhetoric on immigration during the presidential campaign.

“There’s a lot of anxiety in the business community, and we have come to the point of realizing that something big has to be done,” said Eddie Aldrete, a senior vice president of the International Bank of Commerce, a Laredo, Texas, bank that also operates in Oklahoma. The bank has pledged an undisclosed sum to Mr. Sosa’s campaign, he added.

Craig Silvertooth, director of federal affairs at the National Roofers Contracting Association, said he would encourage his members to fund Mr. Sosa’s effort. “The business community was largely missing in action when the bill went through the Senate,” he says. “We were outgunned financially and at the grass-roots level by anti-immigrant groups. We will continue to lose until we get our story out there.”

Potential donors for Mr. Sosa’s effort include trade groups, such as Western Growers, whose 3,000 members grow, pack and ship half the nation’s fresh produce. “It’s important to communicate to the American public the importance of providing a legal, stable work force for agriculture,” says Paul Simonds, communications manager for Western Growers. “We have a work force that is predominantly falsely documented or undocumented. Anything that would further our efforts we will definitely look into.”

In the $1.2 trillion construction industry, at least one-third of the work force is undocumented, according to an estimate by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Industry experts believe the actual figure is much higher: In 2006 alone, nearly half of new construction workers were Hispanics who had arrived in the U.S. since 2000. In agriculture, about 70 percent of all workers are illegal immigrants, according to independent estimates, and an existing guest-worker program supplies less than 2 percent of the work force required each year.

Mr. Sosa’s team has created a series of 30-second pilot TV spots that highlight the work of immigrants in several industries and warn of the consequences of losing that labor force. One of the spots, entitled “Drive Them Out,” focuses on the New Jersey town of Riverside, which fell on hard times after it passed an anti-illegal-immigrant ordinance last year that prompted thousands of undocumented residents to leave. The spot’s closing statement: “Let’s be careful what we wish for.”

Another ad shows “Help Wanted” signs for jobs such as orange-picking and roofing, followed by signs that read “Can’t Hire Immigrants” or “Immigrants Need Not Apply.” In the end, a voiceover states: “Today’s immigrants do the work Americans need done. Can’t we find a way to make them legal?”

The ads consciously avoid the term “illegal” because it “connotes a negative,” Mr. Martinez says. “We want to concentrate on the positives.”

Mr. Sosa, who has worked on several presidential campaigns, says he began thinking about a national ad campaign after the Senate defeated a bipartisan immigration bill last spring. In Mr. Sosa’s view, Senate leaders were cowed by a deluge of calls, emails and faxes from a vocal minority that opposed the bill and, more broadly, promoted negative images of Hispanic immigrants. By contrast, the pro-immigrant proponents didn’t communicate a clear message, Mr. Sosa says.

PHOENIX — Arizona businesses are firing Hispanic immigrants, moving operations to Mexico and freezing expansion plans ahead of a new law that cracks down on employers who hire undocumented workers.

The law, set to take effect on Jan. 1, thrusts Arizona into the heart of the national debate on illegal immigration, which has become a hot topic on the presidential campaign trail. Republican candidates, in particular, have been battling to show how tough they are on the issue.

Arizona’s law, believed to be the strictest in the nation, is shaping up as a test of how employers will react when faced with real sanctions for hiring undocumented labor. It is being closely watched by businesses across the country. While proponents say the crackdown will save the state money on services for illegal immigrants, some businesspeople fear Arizona’s economic growth may be at risk.

Under the law, people will be encouraged to contact a county sheriff’s or county attorney’s office to report businesses they suspect of employing an illegal immigrant. After the sheriff investigates, the county attorney can then seek to suspend and ultimately revoke the business license of an employer who knowingly hires an illegal immigrant. The measure would also require all Arizona businesses to use E-Verify, a federal online database, to confirm that new hires have valid Social Security numbers and are eligible for employment.

The law still faces a court challenge from the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and other business groups. Thursday, a federal judge set a hearing for next Tuesday on a temporary restraining order that would freeze the law’s implementation. Earlier, the judge tossed out a separate lawsuit challenging the law, saying the plaintiffs had sued the wrong parties.

With Congress deadlocked over an immigration overhaul, many states and cities are taking matters into their own hands. Some local efforts are meant to make it hard for illegal immigrants to get housing and jobs, but recent court rulings have suggested these measures may face constitutional hurdles. Meanwhile, measures that accommodate the presence of undocumented immigrants — such as New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s failed attempt to extend drivers’ licenses to them — have been met with a harsh public response.

The issue has echoed in the presidential campaign, as voters passionate about illegal immigration have impelled candidates to take stronger stands. One of the few candidates to buck the trend has been Arizona’s senior senator, Republican John McCain. His poll ratings took a beating after he supported a Senate bill that would have given legal status to millions of people here illegally.

“It’s simple. People want a crackdown,” says John Kavanagh, a Republican state representative in Arizona who co-sponsored the crackdown bill. It passed both chambers of the state legislature June 20 by more than 4-to-1 margins.

Businesses are pushing back against the law, even as they scramble to comply with it. “It’s crystal-clear that the employer sanctions law will harm the state economy,” says Glenn Hamer, president of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry. “It’s simply a question of degree.”

About 500,000 undocumented immigrants live in Arizona, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, and independent estimates suggest about 350,000 of them are working. Immigrants, both legal and illegal, account for 14 percent of the work force. The state enjoys one of the fastest-growing economies in the nation, and its unemployment rate last year was just 3.3 percent.

A University of Arizona study released earlier this year concluded that economic output would drop 8.2 percent annually if noncitizen foreign-born workers were removed from the labor force. Researchers estimate about two-thirds of the workers in that category are in the state illegally.

“Getting rid of these workers means we are deciding as a matter of policy to shrink our economy,” says Judith Gans, an immigration scholar at the university’s Udall Center. “They’re filling vital gaps in our labor force.”

Sheridan Bailey, president of steel-beam manufacturer Ironco, said he has fired several Hispanic employees in anticipation of the sanctions law. “This law has the potential of sinking a business,” he said. Mr. Bailey, who has formed a business group to address the issue, said Congress’s inaction has allowed “policies to be generated on the fringe.”

Ironco recently sealed a deal to outsource some production to a Mexican company. “The labor market is tight, and I face fines if I don’t meet my commitments,” said Mr. Bailey. Pacing his company’s steel-fabrication bay, where welders and fitters build columns, he asked rhetorically: “Who will work here in 112-degree heat, come the summer?”

Dora Cardenas, who owns a small Mexican restaurant in Phoenix, has lost six out of 12 employees since late November. They moved to other states. “They say they were afraid to be here,” said Ms. Cardenas. “I’m even afraid to be here, and I am a legal resident.” She said business is down almost 40 percent since the summer at her restaurant, which caters mainly to a Latino clientele.

Jason Levecke, the grandson of the founder of the Carl’s Jr. fast-food empire and the state’s biggest franchisee, has put on hold plans to open 20 more outlets statewide. “That’s $30 million that could blow up in my face,” he said. “The risk is too great.”

Rep. Kavanagh, the bill co-sponsor, disputed claims that the law will hurt Arizona’s economy. “The illegals are a drain on the economy,” he said, referring to education and other government benefits that some undocumented immigrants receive.

In one sense, the bill is having its desired impact: Employers are rushing to ensure they don’t have undocumented workers. Mr. Levecke says he has hired outside auditors three times to ensure his 1,200 employees are clear, and he let several of them go after the checks. Earlier this week, 300 human-resources managers packed a ballroom at a Scottsdale resort to learn how to cope with the law and possible raids on their premises.

Arizona has become a laboratory for bills and policies to crack down on illegal immigration. In 2004, it passed a proposal to prevent illegal immigrants from using state services, such as adult education and nonemergency health care. Earlier this month, a ballot initiative was introduced to deny U.S. citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants born in Arizona, which critics say is a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Supporters of such measures say the point is to deny people who broke U.S. law the benefit of government services. Opponents contend prejudice is the real motive. “This is about resistance to the browning of the state of Arizona,” said Democratic state Rep. Pete Rios.

While there is no sign of a mass exodus, immigrant advocates report that the sanctions law, coupled with stepped-up efforts to arrest illegal immigrants, has prompted some undocumented families to leave.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, an elected official who has made illegal immigration his focus, has deployed deputies to arrest undocumented day laborers as well as fruit and corn vendors in recent months. If the law goes into effect as scheduled, Sheriff Arpaio will be in charge of investigating complaints against employers in the county, home to two-thirds of all Arizonans.

Mr. Levecke, of Carl’s Jr., says some customers, emboldened by the law, are confronting his Hispanic workers about their immigration status, sometimes using insults.

Isabel de la Rosa lives with her husband, Benito, and three children in a Phoenix trailer park called La Rancheria, where several for-sale signs have gone up in recent weeks. “We are all so afraid, we don’t even want to go shopping,” said Mrs. de la Rosa, 35 years old, whose entire family is undocumented.

She works as a volunteer at her children’s local elementary school. Her husband, who works for a furniture-delivery company, said his American boss is planning to take his business elsewhere. “We are thinking of moving, too,” said Mr. de la Rosa.