PHOENIX — This election year, community groups working to get more Latinos to turn out and vote have enlisted the help of an unwitting ally: Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the brash-talking embodiment of the battles over illegal immigration in Arizona and beyond.

When they knock on doors — trying, at first, to persuade Latinos to join voter rolls, and later returning to make sure they cast their ballots — the activists resort to the same question to drive the conversation: Don’t you want Sheriff Arpaio out of office?

Then they deliver their pitch: Have you heard of his opponent, Paul Penzone?

The groups, organized under catchy names like Adiós Arpaio and Joe’s Got to Go, are a motley mixture: members of religious groups, labor unions and advocacy organizations, as well as high school students who are mostly too young to vote. They were brought together by timing, circumstance and a common goal that to many rings awfully close to home.

Felix Trejo’s father was deported to Mexico three years ago, after he was caught driving without a license by Sheriff Arpaio’s deputies. In 2010, Yaraneth Marin’s father was also deported, after deputies acting on a court order rounded up several of her relatives at home. Jacqueline Garcia’s grandfather, who had been raising her and her brother, was deported in May, after deputies arrested him for some type of traffic violation that she could not describe.