Elvira Arellano: Immigrant Activist’s Standoff with DHS Continues

By Kari Lydersen
Infoshop News (news.infoshop.org)
September 14, 2006

Elvira Arellano didn’t come to the US to be an activist.

Like millions of other undocumented immigrant workers in the country today, she came fleeing poverty in her native Mexico, hoping for more opportunity here. After a stint working in Washington state, she ended up cleaning planes at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.

But political fallout from the Sept. 11 attacks changed the course of her life, setting off a chain of events that turned her into an outspoken activist and national symbol for the immigrant rights movement. Arellano was arrested during the December 2002 “Operation Tarmac” sweep of undocumented workers at O’Hare and other airports around the country, on the grounds that people working under false identities in sensitive locations posed a security risk (though no undocumented workers from Latin America have ever been charged in connection to terrorism.) Immigration agents showed up at her home, arrested the single mother in front of her son Saul, and later ordered her deported.

But Arellano, now 31, was determined to stay in the US with Saul, now seven, who is a US citizen and suffers from health problems including Attention Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder. She gained the backing of community leaders and politicians including US Senator Dick Durbin and Congressman Luis Gutierrez, who introduced “private bills” that granted her stays of deportation.

With the immediate risk of deportation removed, Arellano began speaking out for others in her situation and highlighting the issue of undocumented parents with American citizen children. There are at least 3.1 million US citizen children with at least one undocumented parent, in many cases their sole caretaker. Arellano founded an organization called La Familia Latina Unida (United Latino Family); visited Washington DC and the Illinois capitol numerous times to lobby; met with Mexican President Vicente Fox during a Chicago area visit; and went on a 24-day hunger strike to oppose deportations.

Then this summer she was notified that her stay of deportation had not been renewed, and she was ordered to report for deportation on August 15. Instead, she took a cue from Central American refugees of the 1980s and took sanctuary in a church, essentially daring immigration agents to come and get her. Since August 15, Arellano and Saul have been living in Adalberto United Methodist Church in Humboldt Park, a tight-knit Puerto Rican neighborhood on Chicago’s west side.

Since then, the once-shy and retiring Arellano has worked nearly round the clock doing interviews and press conferences and meeting with church leaders and local officials and activists. A lawsuit was recently filed with her son as plaintiff, arguing that Arellano’s deportation would violate his civil rights. The government’s motion to dismiss said that since Saul is not being deported, his rights are not at stake. But Arellano has vowed she won’t be separated from her son. She petitioned for a stay of deportation while her son’s case is heard; the stay was denied.

Homeland Security officials have stated that since Arellano has admitted to crossing the border illegally twice and using a fake social security number, she is a fugitive subject to arrest.

“I’m not a fugitive,” she responded. “I’m defending the civil rights of my son.”

The department stated that immigration policy is enforced uniformly without regard to a person’s ability to generate public support.

But Walter “Slim” Coleman, the pastor of Adalberto United Methodist Church and a long-time civil rights activist, said he thinks the Department of Homeland Security is punishing Arellano for her activism. This included leadership in the massive March 10 and May 1 pro-immigrant marches in Chicago and camping out in the rain without food for three and a half weeks in her home neighborhood of Pilsen, to protest the pending deportations of workers arrested in a sweep of a pallet-making company in April. In the face of public outcry, those workers’ deportations were stayed.

“This is part of a wave of repression against immigrants,” said Coleman. “This is retribution against her, they’re obviously not happy with her and they’re hardening their stance.”

Many critics of Arellano, including other immigrants or descendants of immigrants, argue that she should have gone through legal proceedings to come to the US. But like millions of other immigrants from low-income backgrounds in Mexico, Central America or Asia, she knew there was no realistic chance of her being granted legal entry or even a tourist visa, despite the fact that whole US industries are dependent on workers like her.

“If I had seen the opportunity to come here legally, I would have,” she said. “But for someone without resources to get a passport or visa is impossible.”

Meanwhile a family that belongs to La Familia Latina Unida will travel to Geneva, Switzerland this month to speak at a United Nations conference on the rights of the child. And Saul, who has spent his time at the church playing with action figures and video games and watching his mother do interviews, is attending the National Latino Congress in Los Angeles to speak about their situation.

With the immigration debate intensifying and homeland security officials vowing to increase enforcement, immigrant advocates say Arellano’s stand may signal a rebirth of the sanctuary movement.

During the 1980s, refugees from bloody civil wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala took sanctuary in churches in Chicago and throughout the US and Canada. Some priests were arrested for harboring undocumented immigrants during that politically volatile era, when US dollars funded brutal right-wing regimes or counter-insurgencies as part of the war on Communism.

Immigration officials have not specifically stated whether they will arrest Arellano in the church; but they say she is subject to arrest wherever she may be. Her supporters have kept watch round the clock to be present if officials come to detain her. Coleman and other community leaders have said there will be no violence or chaos at the church if agents come, but they want the world to see what happens. Hand-made signs saying “Holy Sanctuary,” “Amor, Paz y Justicia” (Love, Peace, Justice) and the like blanket the church’s storefront and pulpit. There is a life-size photo of Saul with a blank outline of Elvira with the caption “Don’t let the migra take my mommy away.”

“She’s got a lot of courage to stay here,” said Alba Ramirez, a Honduran immigrant who traveled in from Chicago’s suburbs to meet Arellano. “What they’re trying to do is terrible. She has support from a lot of people.”

Toribio Barrera, who is also facing deportation proceedings, said Arellano inspired him to keep working to stay in the US. A volunteer firefighter and college student in Illinois, Barrera said he wants to serve in the military and become a US citizen.

“Immigration laws are a catch 22,” said Barrera, who turned himself in to immigration agents in an attempt to legalize his status after his marriage to a US citizen ended. “My back is against a wall. Unless they change the immigration laws it will just be the same story for people over and over.”

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Kari Lydersen is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, In These Times, LiP Magazine, Clamor, and The New Standard.

Additional articles by Kari Lydersen at Infoshop News:

* “Behind Closed Doors:” Bringing Sex Workers’ Struggles into the Open
* Long, Hard Days and Low Pay for Immigrants Rebuilding from Katrina
* Building on Common Ground: New Orleans Activist Group Provides an Alternative
* Katrina's Environmental Devastation Adds to a Legacy of Environmental Racism
* Don't Eat That Fish! More Mercury Will be the Legacy of New Coal-Burning Plants

Infoshop News is a popular independent news site, online since 1997 and now with over 20,000 articles and editorials in its archives. Infoshop News is a news aggregator, independent news syndicate, forum, and publisher of original investigative journalism.

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