Kobach is a true believer in the inherent authority of states and municipalities to enforce federal immigration law. And so he waved off practical considerations that could make verification tricky.
"The so-called problems with verification are a complete fabrication of the ACLU," Kobach scoffed.
Kris Kobach
Tim O'Hare
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But consider the volunteer English teacher, Rolando Puga, who possesses a master's degree in business administration. "I lost my work permit," he says. "I guess you could say I'm 'illegal.'"
Puga, now 39, emigrated to this country when he was 18. Before he lost his work visa, he was the international trade administrator for a bank, he says. Now he does whatever contract work he can get. "I tell people I do not have the privilege of working," he says. His case before the immigration court is pending, but years might pass before he sees a judge. Until then, no official or database can tell the Farmers Branch building inspector whether or not he has the right to live here. Like the many who remain, even as the council seemed to regard them as "barriers" to prosperity, he learned to cope.
"There was a lot of talk about it, and every day it's like, 'Did you hear the news?'" says Claudia Ortiz, manager of Paletería San Marcos, a shop her family has owned since 1998. "You sort of move on, even though it's looming over your head."
In July 2010, Bickel & Brewer sued Farmers Branch, charging that its at-large electoral system robbed the Latinos of council representation. The case will go before a judge later this month. The current system, the complaint alleges, "permits the possibility that the City Council could reside on the same street ..." They weren't far off. The entire City Council lived east of Webb Chapel, primarily in Brookhaven and Wooded Creek. On the west side of town, Hispanics could undoubtedly turn out in sufficient numbers to choose from one of their own in a single-member district scheme.
But in a citywide, at-large system, they'd never voted in sufficient numbers to overwhelm the voting bloc on the east side. As a result, Farmers Branch has only ever known white council members, though it wasn't for lack of trying.
On a recent afternoon, an investment adviser and Farmers Branch Rotary Club president named Jack Viveros lumbered up to a table outside the local Starbucks and eased into the chair. He's a bluff, enthusiastically profane man with a whitening goatee, and his 6-foot-3, nearly 300-pound frame scarcely fit into the chair.
He says he isn't afraid of any man, least of all the kind of man who allegedly threatened him when Viveros ran for council member Harold Froelich's seat last year. He claims Mayor Pro Tem David Koch called him up after he announced his candidacy. "[Koch] said, 'Hey, I can't believe you're actually running. That's very disappointing.'"
Koch, he claims, said he'd get him appointed to a board if he dropped out.
Koch disputes almost every aspect of his story and says Viveros called him, asking for help. Nor, he says, did he ever offer Viveros a seat on a board in exchange for dropping out. "If you call that offering a position, I told him to submit an application and see what happens. We have people applying regularly for a board."
The morning after his alleged conversation with Koch, Viveros claims someone called his cell phone. "It was Sam [Aceves, a Latino and City Council gadfly who was a fierce supporter of the immigration ordinance]. He said, 'Do you know who I am?'" Viveros said that he did.
"'It's in your best interest that you do not continue your campaign,'" Viveros claims Aceves said. He then informed Aceves that he had recorded their conversation. Viveros declined to produce the recording for a reporter, but Aceves was later indicted on charges of coercion against a candidate. He declined to discuss the charge.
"The feds followed me for the last six weeks of the campaign," Viveros says with a chuckle. "They wanted to make sure I made it to the election. I thought it was comical that they'd want to spend that much time and money, but he was interfering with an election."
The Department of Justice had been monitoring elections in Farmers Branch for three out of the last four years. If true, the incident fit in with a political climate that had grown acidic. But the only other indignity Viveros claims he suffered during the remainder of his campaign was a question at a candidate forum leveled at him alone. Reading from a card submitted by someone in the audience, a moderator asked, "Because of your nationality, would you be any more lenient on illegal immigrants, and if so, why?"
"I was livid. I said, 'First of all, let me explain this to you. I was born in Corpus Christi. My parents filed proper paperwork and became citizens. I find it offensive you would ask me that.'"
But nationality or, rather, ethnicity, was clearly on everyone's mind, and when the votes were tallied, Viveros lost by some 400 to Froelich, becoming the latest in an unbroken line of unsuccessful Hispanic candidates, most of whom say they were intimidated in one way or another. There was Ruben Rendon, a school psychologist, and Elizabeth Villafranca, owner of the Mexican food chain Cuquitas, who had earlier been denied entry into the Rotary Club. The very first, however, was José Galvez. Galvez pours slabs and sells concrete. In 2007, he ran against Tim Scott. A naturalized citizen, born in Mexico, Galvez shared a ballot with the ordinance referendum that turned out voters en masse. "It was a little bit rough," he says. "When I would visit households, they'd say, 'Hey, you illegal immigrant, get out of our country!' It's just unfortunate."
