HIS TEXT MESSAGE reached me on Sept. 14, the day after a federal district court judge in Texas declared, for the second time in two years, that the Obama-era program that has shielded him and many others from deportation is illegal. “Just got in,” Tony Valdovinos wrote. “Let me know when you have some time to catch up.”
I first met Valdovinos in 2012. I was newly arrived in Arizona, charged with covering the Southwest as Phoenix bureau chief for The New York Times. He was effectively an Arizonan, having lived in the state since he was 2 years old.
That summer, at the age of 22, he was out volunteering, knocking on doors and urging his neighbors to vote. I was covering the federal civil rights trial of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who stood accused
