Illegal immigration is a high-profile national issue, and Arizona is ground zero of the immigration war. Phoenix is second only to Mexico City as kidnapping center of the world. About 11 percent of the entire population of Mexico now lives in the USA, and Mexicans make up the the largest number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. (7.0 million) as well as the largest number of legal immigrants.

What is it like to live, work, love, and die as an undocumented person? And what is it like on the side of those determined to take care of illegal immigrants their own way?

Terry Greene Sterling enters the fearful ghettoes of Arizona, the gateway for nearly half of the nation's undocumented immigrants and the state that is the least welcoming toward them, to tell the stories of the men, women, and children who have crossed the border. She gets inside their homes, follows them to work, crosses the border with them, all to learn how the undocumented loves, works, plays, sins, fights and dies in the shadows. This book chronicles the untold narratives of the nearly invisible people who are the nation’s new face of immigration. It also examines the people trying to hunt them down, such as Phoenix Sheriff Joe Arpaio, famed for his roundups  and mistreatment of the undocumented. In giving voice to these parties, ILLEGAL sheds new light on the nuances and dilemmas of a crisis that divides a nation.