Illegal Immigrant Turned Brain Surgeon

The hot sun seared his skin as Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa (pictured left) bent in the field to pick tomatoes. It was work few people would do for a pittance every week – and most of his fellow workers on this 4000 hectare farm were, like Quiñones, illegal immigrants. It was a grim existence: he lived in a decrepit caravan in the middle of a field.

One day the farm owner’s son came by. "He looked at us like we were less than dirt," recalls Quiñones. Other workers were only too happy to be disdained by wealthy citizens who could have them deported, but not Quiñones. He carried an English dictionary in his pocket and studied it every day.

It had been a year since Quiñones, a Mexican, jumped the fence in Calexico, California. His cousin was supposed to be waiting for him on the other side. Instead he was met by the US Border Patrol. Half an hour later, Quiñones was back in Mexico.

Guessing that the border police would never expect the same man to cross in the same spot on the same night, he went over the fence again. This time, his cousin was there. Quiñones hopped into his car and the two roared off into the night. It was January 2, 1987, Quiñones’s 19th birthday.

The oldest of Sostenes Quiñones and Flavia Hinojosa’s five children, Alfredo began work aged five, pumping petrol at his father’s garage, where the family also lived, on a dusty road 60km south of the border town of Mexicali. It was hard work, but Quiñones didn’t mind. He also got to drive the cars every now and then, perching on a stack of pillows.

By Mexican standards, the Quiñones family was almost middle-class. But in 1976 the Mexican government devalued the peso, throwing the country into turmoil. "We lost everything, just like that," Quiñones says with a snap of his fingers. "I remember going to the back of the house to find my father crying."