A Strong, but Divisive, Voice for Immigrants

The boycott wasn't even on the radar of the Prince William County-Greater Manassas Chamber of Commerce, as Chairman Rick Hendershot said none of the chamber's 1,100 members had contacted him about it.

In other official circles, Juarez is already a pariah, viewed by county supervisors as a fire-breathing rabble-rouser who has created an undue sense of alarm among Prince William's Hispanic residents.

"He is not a moderate voice," said Board of County Supervisors Chairman Corey A. Stewart (R-At Large). "I see him as an extremist who is hurting the entire Latino community by whipping them up into this anger and trying to convince them that this is a racist measure."

Even the group's name, Mexicans Without Borders, seems to confirm residents' fears about illegal immigration, Stewart said. "The name makes me think they don't believe there should be any controls to stop people from coming in illegally."

Juarez said he recognizes that countries must have borders but rejects the notion that a person can be "illegal." He repeatedly declined to answer questions about his own residency in the United States. "I think it should be a private matter," he said, saying he was under no legal obligation to discuss his status. "One of the messages we're trying to send is that a person's identity should not have to be revealed publicly."

Juarez's path from the banks of the Rio Grande to the frontlines of the region's immigration fight began, as he tells it, in Coatepec Harinas, the mountain town where he grew up two hours southwest of Mexico City. Juarez's father died when he was 4, leaving a 17-acre plot of farmland to Juarez's mother and 11 siblings. As a teenager, Juarez listened to the Beatles, played bass guitar in a rock band and, as photo albums show, tried hard to style himself in the likeness of Jim Morrison.

Juarez never finished college and was laid off from a public relations job at the National Institute of Anthropology and History in 1994. He returned home to the family farm just as the Mexican peso crisis plunged the country into financial turmoil.

"We were struggling," Juarez said, blaming Mexican government corruption and powerful U.S. interests for the crisis. "Our produce became worthless. There were no jobs anywhere."

But there were jobs in Woodbridge, evidenced by the money Juarez's brother Alex wired home to the family. Alex invited him to Virginia, and a week later, Juarez reached the Rio Grande.

Today, Juarez and his wife, Patricia, live with Alex, his wife and their three children in a two-story Woodbridge home. A photo of early 20th-century Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata hangs in the den, casting a burning stare from beneath a large sombrero.

Zapata's modern-day acolytes, the leftist rebels of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, have shaped Juarez's worldview and inspired his organizational strategies -- minus the ski masks and AK-47s. Although Juarez certainly does not advocate armed struggle in the Virginia suburbs, he has worked with Zapatista-affiliated activist organizations, according to Juarez and Web sites, and shares the rebel group's contention that U.S. free-trade polices hurt Latin America's poor and drive emigration.

Of course, Juarez's battles don't transpire in the jungles of Chiapas but in the parking lots of Virginia 7-Elevens, where day laborers gather to solicit work. He and several activist friends formed Mexicans Without Borders in 2000, he said, primarily to assist and advocate for the rights of immigrant workers who were cheated out of wages, injured or in legal trouble.

After authorities moved against day laborers in Woodbridge in 2005, Juarez and his group led protests, then rallied against proposed federal restrictions on illegal immigration the following year. When Manassas tried to tighten its residential overcrowding rules -- prompting a federal investigation -- Juarez again led the fight. Mexicans Without Borders now has affiliate subgroups in Baltimore, the Virginia towns of Culpeper and Harrisonburg, and other places across the region.

At a shopping plaza in Manassas last week, Juarez gathered about 40 people for a bus caravan to a Falls Church rally. Maria Rivas, a 32-year-old illegal immigrant from El Salvador, had arrived with her two U.S.-born daughters, ages 9 and 6. The girls played a fantasy game, speaking to each other in flawless, unaccented English, as their mother explained in Spanish that the new resolution had left her daughters worried their parents would be deported.

"They're young, but they know what's going on," Rivas said, adding that the girls had urged their mother to help Juarez. "We have to support him," she said. "He's a leader, and he's the only one we have."