ALIEN 'PREDATORS'ACTRESS-SLAY SPURS PROTEST OVER ILLEGALS
By TODD VENEZIA


ADRIENNE SHELLY
Murdered in Village.

November 29, 2006 -- A group of activists is trying to make slain indie film actress Adrienne Shelly the poster girl for an immigration crackdown, as they hold a memorial for her tonight outside the Greenwich Village building where she was killed by an illegal alien last month.

Shelly was allegedly beaten to death and hung from a shower rod - in a sloppy attempt to make the death look like suicide - by Diego Pillco, an Ecuador native who is in the United States illegally.

Pillco had been doing some construction work at the Abingdon Square building where Shelly kept an office.

Pillco arrived in the United States from his hometown of Cuenca in the summer of 2005 thanks to smugglers whom he paid $12,000 to sneak him over the Mexican border, law-enforcement sources said.

The activists said her death could have been avoided if the United States stringently enforced its immigration laws to stop human smuggling and the hiring of illegal workers.

"Currently, it's against the law to hire an illegal alien," said Joanna Marzullo, a spokeswoman for New Yorkers for Immigration Control and Enforcement. "So Diego shouldn't have been working and the employer committed a crime."

Marzullo said she expects about 20 people to attend the memorial and vigil outside 15 Abingdon Square at 5:30 p.m.

"We are deeply sorry that Adrienne had to die as a casualty of our federal government's failure to enforce immigration law," the group said in a flier for the event - which featured a large picture of Shelly.

Marzullo said that her group had not been able to reach any of her family, to see how they felt about her image and name being used for this cause.

Shelly's husband, Andrew Ostroy, is a liberal Democratic blogger and radio-show host. He has written little about immigration. He could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Marzullo, who said she comes from a family of Hispanic immigrants, said she believes the issue of strictly enforcing immigration laws transcends party lines.

"I'm a registered Democrat," she said. "I don't believe in packaging my politics."

"My heart goes out to her family, her husband, and her 3-year-old daughter who will grow up never knowing her mother."

todd.venezia@nypost.com

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