YEAH, Yeah, yeah... Whatever. so long as you do it from that craphole you came from.
Posted on 08/21/2007 4:50:53 PM PDT by mdittmar
TIJUANA, Mexico - An illegal immigrant who took refuge in a Chicago church for a year to avoid being separated from her American-born son was deported from the United States to Mexico, where she vowed Monday to continue her campaign to change U.S. immigration laws.
Elvira Arellano, 32, became an activist and a national symbol for illegal immigrant parents as she defied her deportation order and spoke out from her sanctuary. She announced last week that she was leaving the Adalberto United Methodist Church to try to lobby U.S. lawmakers.
She had just spoken at a Los Angeles rally when she was arrested Sunday outside Our Lady Queen of Angels church and deported, said the Rev. Walter Coleman, pastor of Adalberto United Methodist.
"They were in a hurry to deport me because they saw that I was threatening to mobilize and organize the people to fight for legalization," Arellano said in Spanish outside a Tijuana apartment building where she was staying with a friend. "I have a fighting spirit and I'm going to continue fighting."
Arellano, who said she is a single mother, left her 8-year-old son, Saul, in the care of her Chicago pastor's family when she was detained. They were reunited Monday afternoon in Tijuana, but Arellano said her son would be going back to Chicago to live with his godmother, Emma Lozano, and begin third grade in a public school.
"We've all been living together. He knows his mom is OK. He's going to be sad sometimes," said Lozano, who drove him to Tijuana from Los Angeles.
She also said the boy may tour the U.S. to promote migrant rights. The little boy declined to talk to a reporter.
The boy hid behind the pastor's wife and wiped away tears during a news conference in Los Angeles. Mexican authorities did not know the identity or whereabouts of the boy's father, said Luis Cabrera, Mexico's general consul in San Diego.
Opponents of illegal immigration said Arellano's arrest was overdue, and a U.S. immigration official said she had been a criminal fugitive.
Mexican authorities said the deportation highlighted a need to overhaul U.S. immigration laws.
"It's tragic when a mother is separated from her son," Cabrera said.
Arellano asked to speak with Mexican officials in Los Angeles but was denied, Cabrera said. She was not given access until hours later, at San Diego's Otay Mesa immigration detention center.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was unaware of any request that Arellano made to speak with Mexican officials in Los Angeles, and Arellano was given extensive access in San Diego on Sunday night, agency spokeswoman Lauren Mack said.
Arellano was deported at San Diego's San Ysidro border crossing around 10 p.m. PDT after U.S. authorities determined that she had exhausted her legal recourse.
"This was a very, very sensitive removal for us as well as Mexico," Mack said.
Arellano said the deportation process was "very quick."
She said she may return to her home in the Mexican state of Michoacan and then return to Tijuana in September for a demonstration coinciding with planned immigration protests in the United States.
Jim Hayes, director of ICE in Los Angeles, said "proper perspective" should be placed on the woman's case. Using a false identity, as in the case of Arellano, who was convicted of using someone else's Social Security number, can be a threat to national security, he said.
"We don't think she's a martyr," Hayes said. "She was a criminal fugitive who is in violation of the law."
Anti-illegal immigrant groups applauded the arrest.
"Just because the woman has gone public and made an issue of the fact that she is defying law doesn't mean the government doesn't have to do its job," said Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
Arellano arrived in Washington state illegally in 1997. She was soon deported to Mexico, but returned and moved to Illinois in 2000, taking a job cleaning planes at O'Hare International Airport.
She was arrested in 2002 at O'Hare and convicted of working under a false Social Security number. She was to surrender to authorities a year ago but instead sought refuge at the church on Aug. 15, 2006.
Immigration activists said they will continue Arellano's plan to go to Washington, D.C., and take part in a prayer meeting and rally for immigration reform on Sept. 12. They also called for a national boycott on that date.
The sentiment was echoed outside an ICE office in Chicago on Monday.
"Her voice will not be silenced," activist Jacobita Alonzo told a crowd of about 50 supporters.
Chicago Alderman Ricardo Munoz said after a brief speech that Arellano "puts a face on hundreds of deportations that happen every week."
"Because you're splitting up families every day," he said.
How horribly cruel of Mexico to deny entrance to that poor little boy and separate him from his mother. Not.
She better check mexican law very closely - forcible deportees from the US to mexico lose a big chunk of their “rights” as mexican citizens - unless she has lots and lots of bribe money.
Arellano may yet turn out to be the best friend the anti-illegal side has in this fight. The woman defines obnoxious.
Do anything you want.........FROM MEXICO.
Quote from the article: “She also said the boy may tour the U.S. to promote migrant rights. The little boy declined to talk to a reporter.”
Gee, remember how the liberals bitched about little Elian being “used” before Janet ‘I’m a man’ Reno swarmed in and “liberated” him?
Well, I see those a-holes at ICE and HS were lying when they claimed that the had ended the policy of deporting people just barely over the border where they can easily reenter the USA.
BTW, now I want to see those priests arrested for harboring an illegal.
She's still there?? I thought she'd be back in Chicago by now, or at least, say, Arizona or California.
We asked chicagotribune.com readers for their views on the Elvira Arellano case. Here are the results after approximately 23,900 votes were registered:
Should Elvira Arellano have been arrested for breaking U.S. immigration law?
Yes 91.5%
No 8.5%
Should a church building provide sanctuary from the law?
Yes 17.6%
No 82.4%
Arellano’s 8-year-old son is a U.S. citizen. Should that make a difference in how her deportation case is handled?
Yes 23.6%
No 76.4%
Regardless of your personal feelings, do you think Arellano’s case will generate so much sympathy and passion among her supporters that she’ll become the Rosa Parks of the immigrant rights movement?
Yes 15.9%
No 84.1%
Supposedly. Crying for her leetle hijito that she loves too much to take with her to mehico.
"Because you're splitting up families every day," he said.
So if one roach breaks into your house, instead of tossing it out, you need to invite the whole family in, feed and clothe it, educate it, medicate it?
These people chant this mantra of "family, family" yet desert each other every chance they get. Ask me about how many of these "mothers" are endangering their children EVERY DAY in the desert near me. How many take labor-inducing drugs so they can drop their anchor before being deported?
These are not starving or war-ravaged people and I'm sick of our property taxes going up yet again to support them.
We can’t build an effective fence to keep these illegal invaders out fast enough to suit me. The gall of these non-American criminals who think they have rights here is something to behold. Mexicans would laugh their heads off (before throwing me in jail or out of the country) if I showed up south of the border and demanded reform of their laws or my “rights” in Mexico.
I'd like to change them too, and the first order of business should be to rescind the anchor baby law -- undoubtedly one of the dumbest and most destructive laws in the history of our nation.
Take care on September 15,the nut roots will be there in force.
Yes-immigration reform-for the spanish.Not for anyone else...
National boycott on Sept. 12th? Of what? Not buying lottery tieckets or hanging out in front of the Home Depot at 6am?
YEAH, Yeah, yeah... Whatever. so long as you do it from that craphole you came from.
"It's tragic when a mother is separated from her son," Cabrera said.
I was glad she was deported but I have changed my mind...
They should have kept her here, tried her and convicted her for her crimes and sentenced her to about 20 years to life for those crimes.
And then the government could have taken away her son for this pastor that is going to exploit the boy for political purposes and put him in a foster home or an orphanage while she rotted in jail for the rest of her life.
And then they could have told her what they had done with her son.
This whole thing was planned. Somebody promised her a lot of money (Book/movie deal?) for leaving that church.
Staged!
Propaganda!
The Reichstag fire was started by commies and the Poles invaded Germany and that is how WWII was started.
She looks pregnant to me. She ill probably come back to Tijuana before she is due so that she can come across and make sure that the little one is not born in Mexico.
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