How a Mexican immigrant became mayor in Illinois’ Trump country. ‘People here just get along’
ARCOLA, Ill. — Jesus Garza’s palms were sweating as he pulled his stocky frame up behind the wheel of a green Jeep Gladiator to take his spot at the head of the 50th annual Broomcorn Festival parade.
In the 28 years since he left Mexico to work in a broom factory in this small central Illinois city, Garza always attended the local festival, but he never rode in the parade, let alone at the front as the town’s mayor.
His anxiety quickly gave way to joy. Residents jammed along Arcola’s brick streets cheered, clapped and shouted “Jesus!” and “Mr. Mayor!” as Garza gleefully chucked candy while choking back tears.
“I never expected that people would respond like that. That moves me, big time,” an emotional Garza said afterward as he stood in the auto repair shop he owns in town.
“From the day I got here, my dad’s friends, on the American side, they wanted to talk to me every day even though I didn’t speak any English. They invited me to be part of the community, to work on their cars,” he said. “To go from that to everyone cheering me today is just very special. I love this town.”
Garza’s rise from immigrant factory worker and car mechanic to mayor is a remarkable story, and his election in a predominantly white and conservative Midwestern town illustrates a level of disconnect between local attitudes on immigration and the national political narrative on the divisive issue.
Garza, 51, took office in May as a Mexican American political novice in a city filled with supporters of former Republican President Donald Trump, a nativist politician well known for his vitriol toward immigrants, from allowing children to be separated from their parents at the southern border to broadly portraying Mexican immigrants as criminals.
In interviews along the parade route last month, Arcola voters time and again pledged allegiance to Trump’s tough-on-immigration rhetoric while also lavishing praise on Garza. Some had difficulty reconciling the two positions, as if it were OK to support a Mexican immigrant who had done well by their town, but it was a step too far to support policies that would allow others unknown to them to pursue similar
