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Republican state Senator Russell Pearce, a long-time fixture in Arizona politics but until recently a virtual unknown elsewhere, never expected to single-handedly shake up national politics, let alone get under the skin of the White House.

"Nobody could have guessed the impact it would have," Pearce said of the divisive law he crafted to crack down on illegal immigrants in his state -- of which there are nearly half a million. "Who could have guessed that I would have pissed off the president of the United States?"

A 63-year-old father of five and former lawman who worked for the local Maricopa County Sheriff's Office for 23 years, Pearce is clearly reveling in the political shockwaves he has created. He says he is also pleased to have called attention to what he and many other Americans consider misguidedly lenient policies toward illegal immigrants.

As a result, Arizona -- the desert state that provided presidential candidates in Barry Goldwater and John McCain -- has become a crucible for policy on immigration, an issue that crystallizes popular anger ahead of the midterm congressional vote in November.

The state's controversial law goes into effect on Thursday, barring successful legal challenges. It will make it a crime to be in the country without proper documents. Local backers say the legislation's intent is to curb the smuggling of both humans and drugs over the state's porous border with Mexico.

It also requires state and local police officers to check the immigration status of anyone they suspect is unlawfully in the country, even during routine traffic stops. Critics say that this will inevitably result in widespread harassment of Hispanic or Hispanic-looking Americans.

Even so, polls show the Arizona approach is supported by a solid majority of Americans -- a Rasmussen Reports poll in late May found 55 percent of respondents nationally would like a similar law in their own state. Consequently, some political experts say President Barack Obama's steadfast opposition to it will likely help galvanize grass-roots Republican groups.

More significantly, the new law appears to be inspiring copycat efforts in at least 20 other states. That is in addition to the five states that have already introduced similar legislation this year.

As wedge issues go, however, this one may well end up languishing in the desert. Many political analysts say illegal immigration is unlikely to be a deciding factor in all but a handful of contests -- mostly in Arizona itself.

And the eventual backlash against the measure, experts say, could prove severe for its champions, alienating an increasingly affluent Hispanic electorate once considered a potential conservative goldmine for the Republican Party.

HIGH NOON

A fifth generation Arizonan -- almost a settler in a state that has seen furious recent growth -- Pearce fretted as illegal immigration grew from a few farm workers picking oranges in his hometown of Mesa in the 1960s to a multi-billion dollar trade that involves drugs as well as migrant workers.

The violence associated with smuggling was highlighted in March for many Arizonans when a prominent cattleman, Robert Krentz, was shot dead on his border ranch. No arrests have been made, although smugglers remain suspects.

Pearce says his epiphany came on December 16, 2004. That day he was handed a note during a speaking engagement in Washington, telling him that his son Sean, a deputy with the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office in Phoenix, had been shot serving a homicide warrant.

"I called my wife and she said 'Russell, this is really going to make you mad, but Sean was shot by an illegal alien,'" he recalled. Hit in the chest and stomach, the younger Pearce was rushed to hospital in critical condition and has survived.

The elder Pearce blames the feds for the incident. "Government has blood on their hands when they ignore the damage to this country and the killings and the maimings, while they defend lawbreakers and refuse to enforce the law."

Pearce has been working for years on state measures to curb illegal immigrants. An earlier law he championed that ultimately passed required employers to verify their workers using a federal computer system dubbed "E-Verify." That one was passed in 2007.

With conservative allies in the state legislature -- where Republicans control both the House and Senate -- he crafted the law with input from the Federation for American Immigration Reform, an organization that pushes for restrictions on immigration and has supported a raft of state and city ordinances across the country.

As the legislation took shape this year, Pearce got together with then-Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas and consulted University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law professor Kris Kobach. In the words of Kobach, the two sought to make the bill, known as SB 1070, a "bullet-proof law that would withstand any and all changes." They knew the legal challenges were coming.

The bill also needed the political stars to align to become law, and in a strange twist, Obama himself made it possible. Before she went to Washington in January of last year as Obama's Homeland Security secretary, Arizona's former Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano was quick to veto many of the Republican-dominated Arizona legislature's proposals, setting a state record for vetoes with 180 proposals tossed out over seven years in office.

Her Republican Secretary of State, Jan Brewer, stepped up to fill her shoes, and now the conditions were altered. At an April 23 ceremony in the state capitol, she signed the toughest immigration bill in the United States into law -- a law that seeks to drive an estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants out of the state.

The day the law was enacted by Brewer, Pearce stood at the back of the room at the state capitol that afternoon, reluctant to steal her thunder but quietly elated. "I felt like a player that just scored in the final five seconds of a good basketball game," he said. "I was excited, I'd worked on this for years."

Since then, his phone has not stopped ringing. He gets perhaps a dozen media requests a day, including calls from reporters from Spain, Britain and Germany anxious speak to the man who has forced a national debate on immigration and fanned conservative embers smoldering in the Republican Party.

He has also been dubbed a racist by critics, who point out that both the number of illegals flocking across the border as well as crimes has been declining over the past several years. Opponents of the law also note that illegal immigrants mostly work in low-paid jobs on farms, in construction and in the hospitality industry -- oftentimes in jobs that legal residents have long shunned.

A GROUNDSWELL OF SUPPORT

The law has sparked interest in Republican-controlled state legislatures around the United States.

Among them is Utah, where Republican Representative Stephen Sandstrom recently took a daylong trip to the Mexico border with Pearce and other lawmakers and staff. They toured a stretch of the dusty desert strip, marked by an incomplete and much criticized steel border fence, speaking to Border Patrol agents.

Back home in Utah, Sandstrom says he will be introducing similar legislation in coming weeks, setting the process in motion by introducing it in committee in late August or early September at the latest.

"There's a groundswell of support for this," said Sandstrom, who has pushed anti-immigrant legislation for the past four years. "I think it took until this year for the people of Utah to say enough is enough. ... it's going to pass; there's no doubt in my mind about that."

Republicans in Utah are not the only ones keen on copying Arizona. The National Conference of State Legislatures said that five other states -- South Carolina, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Rhode Island -- have introduced Arizona-style immigrant legislation so far this year. And there are reports that lawmakers and other officials in as many as 20 states -- Pearce puts the number at 34 -- are poised to push for similar measures after the summer recess.

But it will be a legal slog.

Arizona is currently fighting lawsuits from the U.S. Justice Department and six other plaintiffs, including civil rights and advocacy groups. If U.S. District court Judge Susan Bolton does not dismiss them all, the legal battle could drag on for years.

"It's going to depend a lot on what happens in Arizona," said Ann Morse, program director for the NCSL's Immigration Policy Project. States "don't want to spend what little money they have tied up in the courts." she said.

'BIGGER THAN IMMIGRATION'

Amid the street protests against the measure in Phoenix last week, President Obama's Justice Department lawyers launched their challenge to the state law, and the political topology was established.

"This issue is way bigger than immigration. It is Obama overreaching," said business student Bryan Berkland, 25, struggling to make himself heard over chants and beating drums outside U.S. District Court in Phoenix on Thursday.

"It's the federal government overstepping its bounds," added Berkland, an independent who said Obama's challenge would clinch his vote for the Republicans.

But while the law and the administration's measures to counter it may energize some voters, analysts say illegal immigration is unlikely to become the decisive issue in any of the congressional districts that are coming into play next fall, except possibly in a handful of Arizona House races.

"This is an issue that in every election the Republicans believe is going to be the keys to the kingdom, and it never performs for them politically," said Simon Rosenberg, founder of NDN, a Democratic advocacy group and think-tank.

"For most Americans this is a secondary or tertiary issue. What they want their politicians to address at the federal level is the economy, healthcare ... issues that are actually more important to them," drawing on polling to back up that argument.

Those facing potential fallout from the legal challenge are Arizona U.S. Representatives Ann Kirkpatrick, Harry Mitchell and Gabrielle Giffords, who are all seeking re-election in congressional districts that already lean Republican, analysts say.

"Those three races are Ground Zero for me," said Mark Jones, a political scientist at Rice University, citing their vulnerability. "You have three incumbent Democratic members of Congress who are identified with President Obama and Nancy Pelosi ... they are eventually part of the power structure that is challenging the Arizona legislation."

'REMEMBER IN NOVEMBER'

While the controversy is unlikely to severely damage Democrats, neither will it be all positive for Republicans.

It has energized some Republican primary races -- notably Brewer's run for the party's gubernatorial nomination on August 24. A Rasmussen Reports poll in June showed her opening up a 49 point lead over her nearest rival, Dean Martin, with whom she was tied as recently as March.

But embracing the law carries greater risks for the GOP with Hispanics, the country's fastest-growing minority and an increasingly hefty voting bloc which turned out 2 to 1 for Obama against Republican candidate and Arizona Senator John McCain in 2008.

"I just don't like that law," said Mexican-American Susan Islas, a Hispanic and independent who toted a placard at a rally to protest the law in Phoenix last week. "We will remember in November who to vote for and who not to vote for."

Signs of that discomfort are already being felt.

In California, billionaire gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman had a divisive primary battle with Steve Poizner over which candidate would do the best job of stopping illegal immigration. She has since had to backtrack as she fights for the Hispanic votes she will need if she is to clinch victory over her Democrat rival Jerry Brown

Using her deep pockets, she is running Spanish-language ads and billboards to distance herself from the Arizona law, and has said she would have voted against Proposition 187 in 1994, an earlier Republican measure that sought to deny services to illegal immigrants in the state.

"Latinos have not been voting for Republicans because they perceive it's a white man's party that doesn't have any respect for them. Meg Whitman has to create an atmosphere of, 'Hey, I appreciate your needs,'" said Allan Hoffenblum, Republican political analyst and publisher of the California Target Book. "She has the money to do it and do it early."

In Texas, Governor Rick Perry, meanwhile, is walking a fine line over the law. He has said it "would not be the right direction for Texas," while appeasing his base by supporting a brief by the state's attorney general, Greg Abbott, opposing the Obama administration's challenge to the law.

While the law has put a match to the immigration debate, sending a blaze through some of the Republican conservative base, analysts and advocates say the party will likely try to douse it before heading into the 2012 presidential cycle.

"Smart Republicans know that, if they are going to retake the White House, they are going to have to win approximately 40 percent of the Hispanic vote," said Frank Sharry, the founder of America's Voice, a group that supports comprehensive immigration reform.

"Going into the presidential cycle, you're going to have a lot more Republicans speaking up and going 'whoaa!'"

n a bid to remake the enforcement of federal immigration laws, the Obama administration is deporting record numbers of illegal immigrants and auditing hundreds of businesses that blithely hire undocumented workers.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency expects to deport about 400,000 people this fiscal year, nearly 10 percent above the Bush administration's 2008 total and 25 percent more than were deported in 2007. The pace of company audits has roughly quadrupled since President George W. Bush's final year in office.

The effort is part of President Obama's larger project "to make our national laws actually work," as he put it in a speech this month at American University. Partly designed to entice Republicans to support comprehensive immigration reform, the mission is proving difficult and politically perilous.

Obama is drawing flak from those who contend the administration is weak on border security and from those who are disappointed he has not done more to fulfill his campaign promise to help the country's estimated 11 million illegal residents. Trying to thread a needle, the president contends enforcement -- including the deployment of fresh troops to the Mexico border -- is a necessary but insufficient solution.

A June 30 memorandum from ICE director John Morton instructed officers to focus their "principal attention" on felons and repeat lawbreakers. The policy, influenced by a series of sometimes-heated White House meetings, also targets repeat border crossers and declares that parents caring for children or the infirm should be detained only in unusual cases.

"We're trying to put our money where our mouth is," Morton said in an interview, describing the goal as a "rational" immigration policy. "You've got to have aggressive enforcement against criminal offenders. You have to have a secure border. You have to have some integrity in the system."

Morton said the 400,000 people expected to be deported this year -- either physically removed or allowed to leave on their own power -- represent the maximum the overburdened processing, detention and immigration court system can handle.

The Obama administration has been moving away from using work-site raids to target employers. Just 765 undocumented workers have been arrested at their jobs this fiscal year, compared with 5,100 in 2008, according to Department of Homeland Security figures. Instead, officers have increased employer audits, studying the employee documentation of 2,875 companies suspected of hiring illegal workers and assessing $6.4 million in fines.

On the ground, a program known as Secure Communities uses the fingerprints of people in custody for other reasons to identify deportable immigrants. Morton predicts it will "overhaul the face of immigration." The administration has expanded the system to 437 jails and prisons from 14 and aims to extend it to "every law enforcement jurisdiction" by 2013.

The Secure Communities project has identified 240,000 illegal immigrants convicted of crimes, according to DHS figures. Of those, about 30,000 have been deported, including 8,600 convicted of what the agency calls "the most egregious offenses."

Neither side satisfied

Criticism has been swift and sure.

While the administration focuses on some illegal immigrants with criminal records, others are allowed to remain free, creating a "sense of impunity. As long as they keep their heads down, they're in the clear. That's no way of enforcing immigration law," said Mark Krikorian, a supporter of stricter policies with the Center for Immigration Studies.

"Even the ones who haven't committed murder or rape or drug offenses, all of them have committed federal felonies," Krikorian said. He favors employer audits, but also the roundups that Obama has largely abandoned.

Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) similarly believes the administration is showing "apathy toward robust immigration enforcement." He said at a House hearing in March that the approach is nothing more than "selective amnesty."

Others, meanwhile, complain that enforcers continue to target otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants, splitting families and harming businesses.

"They've done a lot to start turning the ship in a more strategic and rational direction. It's hard to say how successful they've been," said Marshall Fitz, a specialist at the Center for American Progress. "Just because you change policies at the top or reprioritize your enforcement agenda doesn't mean that on the ground things have changed very much."

Obama heard that message in a closed-door White House meeting with immigration advocates in March and was taken aback, according to participants. They said he was surprised by evidence that thousands of ordinary illegal immigrants continue to be targeted and deported, often for minor violations, despite the official focus on criminals.

The discussion was "vigorous," said a White House official who was present. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. "What he said was: 'We will look at what we are doing. And where we can make changes, we will make them.' The intensity of the conversation, which was already underway, increased as a result of that meeting."

The National Council of La Raza's Clarissa Martinez, who attended the meeting, said: "The gap between the intent and the reality is very, very wide. The president had thought more progress had been made."

Martinez said the federal government is "outsourcing" enforcement to local police, state troopers and deputy sheriffs, opening the way to abuses.

Sarahi Uribe agrees. A National Day Laborer Organizing Network staffer, she contends federal policy has created "a huge dragnet, and it's structural. Basically, it's anyone they can get their hands on."

Focus on crime

Nearly 50 percent of the people who have been deported from the United States this budget year have a criminal conviction, from driving without a license and DUI to major felonies, ICE's Morton said. That represents an increase of more than 36,000 over the same period in 2009, which showed a rise of 22,000 over 2008. "Occasionally, you will hear criticism that our criminal alien efforts are focused around people with cracked tailpipes and speeding tickets. That's simply false," Morton said.

A DHS spokesman said, however, that the agency has no breakdown of the crimes, which makes advocates suspicious.

"It has been a very frustrating experience working with ICE in terms of getting any data on the breakdown," said American Civil Liberties Union legislative counsel Joanne Lin, who has participated in what she called "heated" White House meetings on enforcement. While the government pledges to focus on criminal immigrants, Lin said, the question is this: Which ones?

Morton's June 30 memorandum set priorities for the capture, detention and removal of illegal immigrants. With the federal system facing a limit on how many people it can deport each year, he wrote, "principal attention" must go to people convicted of felonies or at least three misdemeanors punishable by jail time.

In descending order of importance, the memo cites people convicted of a misdemeanor, those caught near the border and those who have failed to obey deportation orders.

"Nothing in this memorandum should be construed to prohibit or discourage the apprehension, detention or removal of other aliens unlawfully in the United States," Morton wrote, but such efforts should not "displace or disrupt" the pursuit of bigger targets.

In an underlined section, Morton listed illegal immigrants who should not be placed in detention except in "extraordinary circumstances." They include people who are pregnant, nursing or seriously ill. Also included are primary caretakers of children or the infirm and people "whose detention is otherwise not in the public interest."

"We're very upfront about what our priorities are," Morton said. "We make no bones about it."