Thread: Elvira Arellano: It's time to get out

It's time to get out
Elvira Arellano has flouted the law long enough. She should leave the church and go back to Mexico.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/commentary ... 5a.article
August 15, 2007

Elvira Arellano, it's time to get out and go home. To Mexico. Today marks a year since Arellano sought sanctuary in a Humboldt Park church to avoid deportation. She's been deported before, but she came back. She faces being kicked out again, except immigration officials haven't gotten their hands on her. Not that they can't.

Immigration officials have the right to break down the doors at Adalberto United Methodist Church, but the government has wisely averted a public relations nightmare by allowing Arellano to flout the law -- for a whole year.

Arellano has used the church as a refuge while she taunts Immigration and criticizes the U.S. Congress for its inability to create meaningful immigration reform. But the government has done its job and snared Arellano more than once. In 1997, she was stopped at the border and accused of carrying false ID. In 2003, she was arrested in a terrorist sting at O'Hare. She was convicted in federal court of Social Security fraud and ordered to leave the country.

Arellano intends to make a special announcement today. We hope she will graciously give up her protest and honor American law -- by following it.

Arellano isn't a murderer and her crimes are not threatening enough that federal officials should violate the principle of sanctuary. But Arellano should realize that the public is growing weary of her stunt. She should have the dignity to walk out -- spare a federal raid on her church -- and acknowledge that she's done what she could for her cause. In the year since she took refuge in the Rev. Walter "Slim" Coleman's storefront church, she has become the face of the illegal sanctuary movement. On a typical day, she fields more than a dozen media and activists' calls. She's personalized our nation's No. 1 debilitating problem: We don't know what to do with the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants who are hiding here.

But there are limits to having an agenda and Arellano's subjecting her elementary school son is beyond the pale.

"She can't take me to the store and can't take me to the school," Saul Arellano recently told the Sun-Times. "It makes me feel a little bad. My other friends, they have their moms and their dads. It's different for them."

Saul has traveled to Mexico and Washington D.C., seeking Congress' help. But how long can he last as her faithful ambassador?

Arellano argues she should be allowed to stay because her son is a U.S. citizen, and she doesn't want to have to leave him to the care of a guardian. But she also doesn't want to take him back to Mexico where he might lose his English-speaking skills. Her argument weakens when we see Saul, alone, on television pushing his mother's cause, while she's holed up in the church.

It's time Arellano stop using Saul as bait -- like the shrewd panhandlers on the L parading their young for change.

The game is over. Elvira Arellano: You've pulled out all the stops, breaking the law, while eloquently stating your case. Your by-any-means-necessary moment is over. Take your son, and start a new life in Mexico.

Illegal immigrant marks year of hiding in church
ARELLANO NOT BUDGING | 'If I leave here, it'll be . . . legally'
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/5103 ... 15.article
August 15, 2007

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA Staff Reporter ecepeda@suntimes.com
For America's most famous illegal immigrant, each of the last 365 days has been one question mark after another: Would Immigration and Customs Enforcement bust down her door and take her into custody? Would she be sent back to Mexico and separated from her son?

The answer has been no, and on the eve of her one-year anniversary of claiming sanctuary in a Northwest Side church, Elvira Arellano says she is prepared for another year of confinement in the name of families facing separation as the government cracks down on illegal immigrants and the businesses who employ them.

"I'm going to keep fighting. The message they're sending is that reform is dead," a visibly exhausted Arellano said in her stuffy apartment Tuesday afternoon. "But we can't ignore the 4 million U.S. citizen children whose families are here illegally. We need to change the laws."


» Click to enlarge image Elvira Arellano
(Al Podgorski/Sun-Times file)

RELATED STORIES• Editorial: It's time to get out
Arellano, 32, has had a federal deportation order against her since 2002. She was first deported from the United States in 1997 after attempting to cross the border with fake papers. She illegally re-entered the country and was arrested in December of 2002 while working at O'Hare Airport under a false Social Security number.
Though convicted in federal court for Social Security fraud, several politicians secured extensions for her. When those ran out, she gambled that Immigration and Customs Enforcement wouldn't arrest her in a church -- the agency continues to say it will arrest her at a time and place of its choosing.


Waiting for change in law
She's been living at Adalberto United Methodist Church with her 8-year-old son Saul, hoping immigration law reform or some other development would allow her to live freely in the United States.
On Tuesday Jacqueline Jackson, wife of civil rights leader the Rev. Jesse Jackson, made her way to the storefront church at 2176 W. Division to counsel the young mother and offer her support.

"I'm going to do whatever I can to call people in Congress to do whatever can be done for this young lady," Jackson said.

Though her pastor, the Rev. Walter Coleman, alluded to a possibility of her leaving her sanctuary, Arellano spoke only of her mission to keep mixed-status families together.

"When I came in I didn't have a plan," she said. "I'm confident in the plan God has for me. If I leave here, it'll be because I leave here legally."

"When I came in I didn't have a plan," she said. "I'm confident in the plan God has for me. If I leave here, it'll be because I leave here legally."

ICE crediability is damaged more and more each day this illegal immigrant remains free! Don't they realize that?

http://www.alipac.us/modules.php?name=F ... ic&t=77762

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