Jack Jardine

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Jack is the Mossbachers' family friend and legal adviser, as well as the president of the Arroyo Blanco Estates Property Owners' Association
He is a lawyer by trade and is openly racist — it is he who uses the phrase "the tortilla curtain" to describe the US–Mexico border
He is married and has a teenage son, Jack Jr., who shares and even goes beyond his father's prejudiced views
Jack represents the epitome of the successful, upper-middle-class white American

Jack is manipulative and slightly sleazy — Delaney initially finds him off-putting not just because of his racist views, but because of his personality
He is confident, outspoken, and completely unapologetic about his anti-immigrant stance
He presents his racism as common sense rather than prejudice — framing his views as practical concern for the community rather than hatred
He is a skilled lawyer, which means he is good at making his arguments sound reasonable and logical, even when they are not
He is also quietly self-serving — for example, he advises Delaney not to file an official report about hitting Cándido, which protects Delaney but also conveniently removes any inconvenient attention from the neighbourhood

Jack is the driving force behind the gated community and, later, the stucco wall around Arroyo Blanco
He argues that immigrants crossing the border are "killing" the community, dismissing them as uneducated peasants with nothing to offer
When Delaney challenges him and calls his views racist, Jack brushes it off — claiming he is simply being realistic about how things are
After learning from Delaney about the hit-and-run accident, Jack's son asks where the Mexican camp is — and the next day Jack Jr. goes and destroys it
This shows that Jack's influence directly enables and encourages his son's violent behaviour, even if Jack himself never gets his own hands dirty
He also uses his connections and power to shut down the local labour exchange, cutting off one of the only sources of income for people like Cándido and América

Jack serves as the most openly and honestly prejudiced character in the book — unlike Delaney, who tries to hide his racism behind a liberal identity, Jack makes no such effort
He represents the kind of polished, well-spoken racism that hides behind respectability and legal language
By the end of the novel, as Delaney becomes more and more consumed by fear and hatred, he comes to think of Jack Jardine as a friend — showing how far Delaney has fallen
Jack is important because he shows how prejudice can be passed down from parent to child — his son Jack Jr. is a more violent and extreme version of the same hatred

Jack represents the way that racism is often dressed up in the language of economics, safety, and community values — making it harder to challenge and easier to spread
He gives a voice to the fears of the wealthy white community, and in doing so, he makes those fears feel legitimate to people like Delaney who might otherwise have resisted them
The fact that the novel's title comes from something Jack says highlights just how central his worldview is to the story — he is not just one racist character, but a symbol of the entire anti-immigrant mindset the book is criticising