http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/1...MMIG15.article

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And this woman isn't exploiting her son?????

4 months in church: 'I'll stay'
Son, 7, off to Miami while immigrant mom stays put

December 15, 2006
BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA Staff Reporter
Elvira Arellano, the 31-year-old illegal immigrant who claimed sanctuary in a Northwest Side church to avoid deportation, marks her fourth month of protest today.

"I'm here," said Arellano, speaking in Spanish, "and here I'll stay until the government reforms laws that tear families apart."

Arellano spoke of the pain of separation Thursday afternoon, hours after sending her ambassador to the world -- her 7-year-old son, Saul -- on his fifth trip to spread her word.

He flew to Miami to join a protest against raids at Swift & Co. meat processor that netted almost 1,300 undocumented workers Tuesday.

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Saul, scheduled to return to Chicago today, has missed about eight days of school, Arellano said, "but he works with a tutor and faxes in his homework when it's due."

In the last four months Arellano herself has missed her son's parent-teacher conferences, the opening of Mel Gibson's film ''Apocalypto,'' and has gained 10 pounds from being limited to her small apartment above the church.

But the raids stirred her desire to walk out of Adalberto United Methodist Church.

'I'm very positive'
Arellano spent the day fielding phone calls in response to the Florida raids. She works full time for Centro Sin Fronteras, an immigrant rights group, using a fax machine and computer in her living room, but she wanted to be out on the streets.

"I wanted to protest, to gather people and go, but I couldn't," Arellano said.

She faces deportation and is ineligible for U.S. citizenship for having been deported once before, re-entering the country illegally, and then working here under a false Social Security number.

Arellano previously secured stays of deportation with help from Illinois Senators Dick Durbin and Barack Obama. She hopes that a bill sponsored by Rep. Luis Gutierrez will grant her another extension, but it has not moved ahead in the last few months. A federal lawsuit filed on her son's behalf to keep her in the country was dismissed.

"I'm very positive," Arellano said, "and I pray to God I won't be deported.''

Tim Counts, Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman, said Arellano will be removed at the appropriate place and time.

"We estimate there are more than 660,000 fugitives [in the United States], and she is one of them," he said.

ecepeda@suntimes.com