Alfredo Gutierrez’s father, a US citizen, was deported to Mexico from his Arizona hometown—the mining town where Alfredo grew up. This occurred during a wave of anti-immigrant hysteria stoked by the Great Depression, but as Gutierrez makes clear in a book that is at once a personal chronicle and a thought-provoking history, the war on Mexicanimmigrants has rarely abated. Barack Obama now presides over an immigration policy that is the equal of Herbert Hoover’s in its harshness.<p>His family experiences inspired Gutierrez to pursue the life of a Chicano activist. Kicked out of Arizona State University after leading a takeover of the president’s office, he later became the majority leader of the Arizona State Senate. Later still, he was a successful political consultant. He remains an activist, and in this engrossing memoir and essay, he both dissects the racism that has animated a century of border policy—including a record number of deportations under Obama—and the timidity of immigrant advocacy organizations today.</p>