Immigration Activist Will Leave Church

CHICAGO (By Antonio Olivo, Chicago Tribune) August 16, 2007 — During the year she has avoided deportation inside the sanctuary of a Humboldt Park church, Elvira Arellano has become a national symbol for illegal immigration, with supporters heralding her as a Mexican Rosa Parks and critics citing her freedom as an example of government inaction.

Next month, Arellano plans to provoke the discussion even further by leaving Aldaberto United Methodist Church and traveling with her 8-year-old son, Saul, to Washington.

There, at the risk of being arrested by federal agents and deported, she'll pray and fast for eight hours on Sept. 12 at the National Mall in hopes of pressuring Congress to pass more lenient immigration reforms, Arellano said at a news conference Wednesday -- the one-year anniversary of her stay inside the church.

After canceling earlier plans to first travel elsewhere in the country, Arellano's journey will be by road, her supporters said. They declined to discuss further details of the trip for fear of repercussions in a climate of stepped-up workplace raids, harsher penalties against hiring illegal workers and arrests of some 675 illegal immigrants per week in recent months.

After a bipartisan bill that would have offered legalization to the country's some 12 million undocumented immigrants was defeated in the Senate earlier this summer, federal officials have embarked on such measures to prove they're serious about enforcing current immigration laws.

Arellano, 32, was arrested in 2002 during a federal sweep at O'Hare International Airport, where she worked cleaning airplanes. Convicted of using a fake Social Security number, she was scheduled to report to the government last summer. Instead, she took refuge inside the church, which she says she has never left since.

"God has protected me for this long year," Arellano said, delivering a prepared statement in both unsteady English and in her native Spanish before a standing-room-only crowd of supporters and TV cameras inside the tiny Division Street church.

"But I cannot sit by now and watch the lives of mothers and fathers like me and children like Saul be destroyed."

"If this government would separate me from my son, let them do it in front of the men and women who have the responsibility to fix this broken law and uphold the principles of human dignity," Arellano said, calling on supporters to skip school and boycott local businesses while she's in Washington.

Although Arellano and her supporters insist the trip is not meant as a challenge to federal immigration authorities, their plans nonetheless further complicate the government's position.

All along, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, has had the legal authority to enter the church and arrest Arellano. But with worldwide publicity surrounding her case, officials have avoided the symbolism of raiding a church, referring anyone who asks about their intentions to a prepared statement that calls Arellano a fugitive and explains that all arrests are prioritized.

On Wednesday, an ICE spokeswoman again referred reporters to the statement.

With immigrant activists from across the country expected to join Arellano, any arrest between now and then could be explosive, said Amalia Pallares, an associate professor at the University of Illinois who is preparing a book on immigration that will highlight the Arellano case.

"It might actually be something that pushes people to further mobilize," Pallares said, predicting the trip itself would re-energize an immigration movement that has had the wind taken out of its sails since legalization was defeated in June. "She embodies this whole notion of mixed-status families, and the issue of family separations. In that sense, she's really given a face to a situation that millions of people are living."

Dave Gorak, executive director of the Midwest Coalition to Reduce Immigration, said Arellano embodies "the arrogance and disrespect shown by illegal aliens for our laws and our sovereignty," an opinion reflected hundreds of times over on blogs and conservative Web sites each time Arellano's story is publicized.

"She's no Rosa Parks," Gorak said, referring to a frequent comparison to the Civil Rights-era leader that has angered many African-Americans.

Even some Hispanic immigrant advocates have privately criticized Arellano for thrusting Saul into the limelight too often and for stealing attention from other immigrants suffering similar plights, Pallares said.

But with Rev. Jessie Jackson's wife, Jackie Jackson, and a host of labor and spiritual leaders standing by her side on Wednesday, Arellano was being feted as a hero on the day of her one-year anniversary.

Standing inside the stuffy church with an antsy Saul by her side, Arellano smiled and nodded as speakers from as far away as California and Mexico City sang her praises to chants and applause.

Later, as musicians strummed out ballads that lamented the plight of all immigrants unable to earn decent wages in their home countries, Arellano played host to a reception line of reporters and admirers, a stark contrast to the quiet nights that have marked most of her time there.

"I feel a lot of hope," she said about her trip, adding she wasn't afraid of being arrested. "I'm not challenging anyone. I'm just bringing to light what those who are in power don't want to see."