Sergio C. Garcia came to California packed onto the bed of a Chevy pick-up. It was July 4, 1994, and the 17-year-old was one of eight undocumented Mexican immigrants hidden under a hard plastic cover as they crossed the U.S. border under a blazing desert sun.
Garcia prayed out loud as fellow travelers passed out from the heat. He was sweat-drenched and seething at his father, who had asked him to make the perilous journey, to relocate for the second time to a country where he would be labeled “alien” and face the barriers associated with having crossed, without a visa, the world’s most frequently-crossed international border.
In his young mind, he was leaving an important position—he was student-body president of his rural Mexican high school. But he couldn’t have known that he would assume a much greater leadership role when he returned to the Chico area, where he had spent his early childhood. He couldn’t have known that 20 years into the future he would be known, nationally, as the undocumented attorney.
