Renewed calls for immigration reform after mother's deportation

Tuesday, August 21, 2007
(08-21) 02:44 PDT TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) --

Officials on both sides of the border were renewing calls for changes to U.S. immigration laws after a Mexican woman who stayed in a Chicago church for a year to avoid being separated from her American-born son was deported.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said Monday that Elvira Arellano's removal from the United States to Mexico demonstrated the need for legislators to change U.S. immigration laws.

"Until we resolve the status of the estimated 12 million undocumented people living and working in the United States by giving them some meaningful pathway to citizenship, families will continue to be torn apart," Villaraigosa said.

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 at Adalberto United Methodist Church. She announced last week she was leaving the 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 left her 8-year-old son, Saul, in the care of Coleman's family. They were reunited Monday afternoon in Tijuana, but Arellano said the boy would return to Chicago to live with his godmother and begin third grade in a public school.

Mexican authorities echoed Villaraigosa, saying the deportation highlighted a need to overhaul U.S. immigration laws that divide families.

"It's tragic when a mother is separated from her son," said Luis Cabrera, Mexico's general consul in San Diego.

But opponents of illegal immigration said Arellano's arrest was overdue.

"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.

Jim Hayes, director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Los Angeles, called for "proper perspective" to be placed on the woman's case.

"We don't think she's a martyr," he said. "She was a criminal fugitive who is in violation of the law."

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.

Hayes said using a false identity can be a threat to national security.

Immigration activists said they will continue Arellano's plan to go to Washington, D.C., and take part in a prayer meeting and rally on Sept. 12. They also called for a national boycott on that date.

Arellano said she may return to her home in the Mexican state of Michoacan and then return to Tijuana next month for a demonstration coinciding with the planned immigration protests in the United States.

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