Thread: CHICAGO — Her world is six rooms and 12 church pews

One illegal immigrant battles in the public eye
By Bill Glauber, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
March 25, 2007

CHICAGO — Her world is six rooms and 12 church pews.

She has a cell phone, a computer and a MySpace account. She has room to work, watch television, eat, sleep and pray. Once a week, a young man from the local laundry comes by to gather the dirty clothes and wash them at no charge. Friends do her shopping. Small ladies wearing large coats come by every weekday morning and afternoon, shepherding her 8-year-old son to and from school.

This is the world of Elvira Arellano, 32, single mother, activist, illegal immigrant.

On Aug. 15, 2006, Arellano and her son, Saul, sought sanctuary at Adalberto United Methodist Church. She flouted an order to report for deportation, refused to go back to Mexico, refused to leave her American-born son behind in Chicago.

Together, mother and son made headlines and became symbols of the battle over immigration in America, just as the battle heated up during the mid-term election campaign. Days passed, then weeks, now months.

And mother and son are still here, symbols, yet also flesh-and-blood figures.

"I want to struggle to stay here for my son," Arellano says. "At the last moment, if it's my fate to leave, it will be forever."

Her son, she says, "has to stay here. He'll fight here."

Arellano speaks in Spanish, the translation provided by a community activist, Emma Lozano, whose husband is the church's pastor. Together, Arellano and Lozano organized La Familia Latina Unida to lobby for illegal immigrant families with U.S. citizen children.

Illegal immigration is a subject fraught with controversy, about costs to the society, consequences for American workers and the very nature of what it means to be a citizen of the United States. But Arellano and her son take the abstract controversy and make it personal.

Her son has traveled to Washington, Miami, Los Angeles and Mexico City, a little kid carrying a large message.

They hold fast to an ancient, symbolic right of sanctuary inside a church, making a home in a second-floor apartment. But sanctuary in a church has no force of law in modern America.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials vowed in a statement last year to enforce the nation's immigration laws "and ensure they are applied fairly, without regard for a person's ability to generate public support. Arellano willfully violated U.S. immigration laws and is now facing the consequences of her actions."

They could come in and take Arellano at any time.

Arellano broke the law by entering America illegally and working under a false Social Security card.

In 1997, she made two illegal crossings. She was caught the first time and deported. On her second attempt, she passed unnoticed.

She traveled to Washington state, worked as a baby sitter and later gave birth to Saul. She and the boy's father are no longer together.

She moved to Chicago in 2000 and got a job at O'Hare International Airport cleaning airplanes for $6.50 an hour.

Two years later, she was arrested during Operation Tarmac, a nationwide crackdown against illegal immigrants working at airports, and was later convicted in federal district court of Social Security fraud, according to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement statement.

After her arrest, Arellano found her voice and thrust herself into the immigration debate.

Several private bills were introduced on her behalf in Congress to allow her to remain legally in the U.S., though none was enacted.

Now she wonders what her future will be. "I represent millions of people," Arellano says. "... I've been chosen by God to be this symbol."

— Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

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CHICAGO — Her world is six rooms and 12 church pews.

She is in a prison of her own making.
HER world is Mexico. She has all the room she could ever need there.
I have no sympathy for her hiding in a church.
And I have no regard for any church that would abet a law breaker for any reason.

Hey Elvira!!


GET OUT!!!!!


G..E..T O..U..T


Get out!!!!


Go away
Exit my sovereign nation
Take your activism back where you came from

Open the Church door and leave
Unite your own fellow Mexican citizens
Take a hike


Get out
Leave
Go away




Neils
6:33 pm
03/26/2007

Must be a slow day for the press or do they just want to drum up a little more sympathy for illegal aliens by recycling 2-month-old articles?

Pathetic.

http://www.alipac.us/modules.php?name=F ... ion+tarmac

Poor, poor Elvira. She has six rooms, a tv, a computer, and a cell phone. Who knows what other goodies she gets. She also has people escort her son to and from school, people to do her laundry, and people to do her grocery shopping. That sounds pretty good to me!
I am so sick and tired of articles that beg for everyone's sympathy. This woman is a criminal, and doesn't deserve to any special treatment. She is not a migrant, but is an illegal alien. She has broken our laws more than once. Now I understand that there is a "special request" in the STRIVE bill, to give her asylum - or whatever.
I just don't understand why the media treats her like a hero!

Six rooms huh, someone to do her washing, cooking, whatever she needs done, while my wife and I live in one room, a farily good sized one, but one room, sorry, my give a (you know that stuff that cows does in the fields lol) just gave out!

This is the world of Elvira Arellano, 32, single mother, activist, illegal immigrant.

Should be:

This is the world of Elvira Arellano, 32, single mother, activist, illegal immigrant, Federal fugitive.

This person is definitely a sign of the times. It proves how our government does not enforce our laws(how many strikes before illegals are out?). Our constitution means nothing to the White House and our immigration laws are completely ignored so why are they wasting their air in our government? They could take Elvira to Mexico and live in that third world country instead of trashing America?

Well she's better off than some permanently laid off auto workers!

I read a story in the Detroit Free Press, telling of all the workers had lost their homes.

One family, with kids, had to move into a one bedroom apt.!

So illegals....get out of here!

hmmm so she is on my space huh????

are you thinking what im thinking?? that its time we find that name and send her some messages? nice ones of course..