Obama shares blame with Sheriff Joe in immigration mess

• Today%27s immigration policies have torn apart families like mine and have ripped at our social fabric.
• The president is as much to blame as our sheriff in eroding rights and harming safety
• The intent of House Bill 2655 is to fix the damage done to Arizona through truth and reconciliation.

When my grandfather came to Arizona as a guest worker in the 1970s, he did not expect to stay. But through the years of building the Palo Verde power plant, he settled down and brought the family over.

Forty years later, he could never have predicted that the son he raised here since his teen years would be deported or that his grandson would one day become a state representative.

That is the time span in which I grew up, a first generation Arizonan, raised speaking English and taught to make the best of myself for my family.

I did not get involved in our broader community until I got to community college, where public-policy programs nurtured the ideas I cared about and made them take root in actual people's lives, not just books.

Mentors taught me that I could make a change in the world despite humble beginnings. But when my uncle was deported in 2009 that mission I had made for myself became personal.

It was eye-opening for my whole family because almost none of us knew he was undocumented. My grandfather brought my mom here legally when she was in grade school; we had assumed we were all in the same situation. After seeing how my grandmother still faces depression and how our family now struggles with my 54-year-old uncle taken from us, I felt a responsibility to bring this to state government -- not just for my family but for all the Arizonans who live with that same shadow of fear or gulf of separation.

Today's immigration policies have not only torn apart families like mine but they have ripped at our social fabric. The reason I ran for office and introduced the Arizona TRUST Act, House Bill 2655, is to repair this fabric through a process of truth and reconciliation.

Like it has done in California, HB 2655 would re-prioritize police work on public safety instead of the distraction of immigration enforcement. It would end the troublesome federal agreements that seed profiling in our state and it would bring transparency to local government's application of immigration policy while making the federal government pay for the burdensome demands it currently places on us at the expense of our taxpayers.

In such a conversation people often expect me to highlight our infamous Maricopa County sheriff and his misdeeds, but I actually want to address the damage done by our nation's president.

The Obama administration has for too long gotten away with its part in a bipartisan war of attrition. The president faces off with Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer in front of the press while colluding with the sheriff in deportations once the cameras click off.

Since President Obama tapped former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano to lead the Department of Homeland Security, our nation's immigration policies have more closely mirrored our state's Senate Bill 1070 than the administration will admit. And with law enforcement entangled in immigration, response times get delayed, the cries of victims of real crimes go unheard, and a cloak of fear is cast over entire communities.

What has been a supposed attack on immigration has actually been an erosion of all of our rights and everyone's safety that, ironically, Arizona's immigrants are leading the fight restore.

The violations we have witnessed in Maricopa County are not solely about one person. And the remedy goes far beyond any one officeholder. Other states have used Arizona as a negative example to propel their own legislation to rebuild trust and repair the damage of federal immigration policies on local public safety.

It is time our Legislature takes a different course; one that goes to the root of our issues, gives voice to the victims and offers a way forward to a new day where our currently polarized state has a social fabric we have stitched back together. For the betterment of all, we must unblock the potential of those still forced into the shadows.

Despite what we have endured, I have convinced my family that it is worthwhile to stay here; we should not give up on Arizona. I see a day on the horizon where our moniker as a state of hate is long behind us and the best of who we are is evident in how we treat each other and in the policies we pass. That great transition has already started; in fact, it might be SB 1070's most unexpected consequence and its greatest gift to us.

Its next step starts with trust.

Juan Mendez, a Tempe Democrat, represents District 26 in the Arizona House.