“America's treatment of the issue of illegal immigration is profoundly dysfunctional... Marrero makes a convincing case that America's success in the 21st century depends on abandoning political posturing in favor of coherent national policy” —Publishers Weekly

“Pilar Marrero...has covered the immigration issue more closely and more intimately than any other journalist in the country.... She often knows more than the people in Washington about what is going on, but more importantly, how the community around the country will react to what is going on in Washington. Whenever we talk, she asks the skeptical and simple questions that her readers want asked. She channels the conversation -- and the hopes, aspirations and fears -- expressed at breakfast tables, in coffee shops and at panaderias across the U.S. She is in tune with the community and pushes me to do a better job representing that community.” —Congressman Luis Gutierrez

“This book reminds us that the American Dream is the dream of America's immigrants. To insult, fire, jail, deport and scapegoat immigrants for every imaginable evil--even to kill them--is to extinguish not just their dream, but ours a nation. It is a story of opportunism and exploitation, of the political and moral failures of Democrats and Republicans alike, of the billions at stake in building the border wall or contracts for detention centers, the lives on the line in the deadly deserts, the echoes of old racial confrontations. Yet in spite of all, the dream isn't dead: Marrero brings us the voices of the only ones who could possibly save us from ourselves: the immigrants who bequeathed us the dream in the first place.” —Rubén Martínez, author of Desert America: Boom and Bust in the New Old West