Thread: After a month in sanctuary, immigrant confident of victory

Mark Brown
After month in sanctuary, immigrant confident of victory

September 13, 2006

BY MARK BROWN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST




A puppy is barking behind Elvira Arellano's closed bedroom door when I arrive at the Division Street storefront church where she took refuge a month ago Friday, the dog apparently anxious to meet her visitors. The rumble of buses and overamplified bass occasionally intrudes through the open second-floor window.




Arellano's niece is already here with a group of friends vacationing from Mexico. They make their excuses to leave but not before asking her to pose for group pictures. You can see they regard Arellano as a hero.



That's when I notice Arellano has switched out of the T-shirt depicting Mexican revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata that she wore during the first two days of the media siege.

"Who would Jesus deport?" her new T-shirt asks. I can hear her detractors sputtering now.

It's much easier to find a parking space in the 2600 block of West Division with the satellite trucks making only sporadic visits these days to Adalberto United Methodist Church.

'God is watching me'



Last time, Arellano's supporters were keeping a 'round-the-clock vigil, but it's mid-afternoon and the doors to the church sanctuary are locked. It would have been impractical to keep up the previous pace. The church still opens for a two-hour prayer service every evening.

The door leading upstairs to the church office/apartment where Arellano has taken residence is locked, too, and the buzzer doesn't work, but eventually I found the right telephone number, and Roberto Lopez, director of an immigrant rights group working with Arellano, led me to her.

I have come unannounced, mostly to get a sense of Arellano's day-to-day existence under this self-imposed house arrest -- which, when you think about it, is the practical result of her decision to assert the ancient doctrine of sanctuary to avoid deportation.

But I'm also here to once again confront those detractors -- and those in the middle -- with the human side of the person at the center of this controversy.

Somehow, many people have come to see Arellano as an aberration in the immigration debate, when actually she's pretty much the norm, just gutsier than most about fighting for herself and for her 7-year-old son, Saul.

Saul, a citizen by virtue of being born here, has started back to school in the second grade.

"It was very hard because all his life I've been the one to take him," Arellano tells me.

With everything going on this year, he really wanted her to go with him, she says. But that wasn't to be. Arellano said she hasn't left the church even once.

She tells me it might be possible for her to slip off to the park or to go shopping, then sneak back home undetected to keep her interview appointments, but she doesn't dare.

"My commitment is to God," Arellano says. "God is watching me, and I don't lie to God."

She tells me all this in Spanish with Lopez translating for me. This is one of the things that gets folks riled up, but I'll bet she has a better command of English than most of them have of a second language. She reads English and can speak it when she must. She even did a talk radio program recently entirely in English. But she feels more comfortable having conversations in Spanish.

"I didn't have the opportunity to go to school because I was the father and the mother," she explains.

By now, the dog, Daisy, has been freed from her temporary exile and is curled up in Arellano's lap. She says Daisy is a mini-Doberman, but she reminds me more of a Chihuahua with longer legs and Doberman markings. "Daisy is a citizen, too," she jokes.

Saul gets home from school and bounds into the room, followed soon after by Arellano's pastor, the Rev. Walter "Slim" Coleman.

Saul has started going to the neighborhood Boys' and Girls Club after school. Someone has supplied him with an X-box and Game Cube to help him keep busy. His mom oversees his homework and fixes his meals in the back kitchen.

200 marriage proposals



Coleman tells me Arellano has "had about 200 marriage proposals" in the past month.

"Everybody on Division Street wants to marry her," he says, adding that she's not interested. I ask if these proposals are shouted up through the open window. "No, they're very respectful," Coleman says. "They say, 'Pastor, tell her I'd like to marry her.' "

Her days are mostly like this one: a steady succession of phone calls, visitors, interviews, reading and taking care of her son. It sounds monotonous, but her resolve seems as strong as it did a month ago.

"I feel good. I feel tranquil," she says, convinced that she will soon have clearance to stay in the country. Then, she says, "I can continue with my daily life and work and take my son to school and have a normal life like any other family."

I'm starting to think it's just as likely I'll be meeting her at the church again in another six months.





http://www.suntimes.com/output/brown/cs ... own13.html

I have one question. Is her son going to an English school? If so then how can she help him with his homework?
Since she is cooped up inside the church, why doesn't she learn how to speak English? Many legal immigrants that I know started learning the language before they came here.

She sounds so pious but I remember her calling those who disagreed with her [mod edit]. She says her duty is to God, well someone should tell this Mother Teresa wannabe she has a duty to her little boy too. She should take him back to Mexico and get a job.

This woman Elvira has no shame. She's making a mockary of the United States government, I.C.E., the sanctuary church,and the laws that has been enacted by the Congress of the United States.Shame,shame on her abettors and enablers for willfully disobeying the laws of this land.

Also shame,shame on those who are sworn to enforce our immigration laws and refuse to do so.Have they no self-respect?

ChromeDome: Unfortunately even illegals have rights under the constitution's 4th Amendment. I think that a search warrant may be required. If that is the case, I don't think that most judges want to do that.

It's a United Methodist Church or somehow affiliated. If you are
a Methodist perhaps you should speak with your bishop or clergy.

Originally Posted by swatchick

ChromeDome: Unfortunately even illegals have rights under the constitution's 4th Amendment. I think that a search warrant may be required. If that is the case, I don't think that most judges want to do that.

Actually illegals,as non citizens, do not have all the rights of citizens. If they could claim rights under the 4th Amendment to the Bill of Rights,then they could also have 2nd Amendment rights which is the right to bear arms.There's no way that illegals that became criminals as they entered this country illegally would have a right to bear arms nor could they have rights under the Bill of Rights which were created for American citizens,not visiting illegal Mexicans nor illegals from any other country.

I.C.E. already has warrants for her arrest as she has been declared a fugitive from justice and has been ordered deported (again).I.C.E. has every legal right to pick her up anywhere,anytime.They just need the will to do it.

By now, the dog, Daisy, has been freed from her temporary exile and is curled up in Arellano's lap. She says Daisy is a mini-Doberman, but she reminds me more of a Chihuahua with longer legs and Doberman markings. "Daisy is a citizen, too," she jokes.

Well, why not?

Freak shows like this have reduced the value of citizenship to this level.

I bet she votes, too.

I didn't have the opportunity to go to school because I was the father and the mother," she explains.

I have been the father and mother and sole support to my son for 17 years (and counting)while working full time, attending parent conference meetings, checking homework, doing houswork, grocery shopping, yard work, snow shoveling, paying all the bills and a myriad of other responsibilities . . . so her point is what?

Additionally, has she still not accepted the fact that she is a convicted felon, there is a warrant out for her arrest and that you can't work without a legal social security number? The thought process of these illegals (or lack thereof) is so drone induced, its like they live in the twilight zone or the land of Oz or something.

Oh and those 200 marriage proposals . . . chick is fugly, a poor excuse for a mother and a felon, are there really men that desperate?

She sounds like June Cleaver.