An illegal Mexican immigrant who sought refuge inside a Chicago church for a year was arrested in Los Angeles on Sunday afternoon after taking her campaign on the road.

Elvira Arellano was arrested about 4:15 p.m. Chicago time by law enforcement officials after leaving Our Lady Queen of Angels Church in downtown Los Angeles, said Emma Lozano, an adviser who was there during the arrest.

After talking to news media inside the church, Arellano and her supporters got into their van to head north to San Jose, where she was scheduled to speak at another church, Lozano said. Moments after they got in the van, an unmarked vehicle stopped them.

The driver of Arellano's van, Roberto Lopez, poked his head out of the van because he wanted to see why they were being blocked. Several other unmarked vehicles surrounded their van.

Agents came out of all the cars screaming at the top of their lungs for her to get out, Lozano said. Her 8-year-old son, Saul, started to cry, and Arellano said to everyone in the car, "Calm down. Don't have any fear. They can't hurt me."

Then she turned to the people who were about to arrest her and she said, "You're going to have to give me a minute with my son," Lozano said. She spent time with her son in the car, and then surrendered.

It was over in less than two minutes. She was arrested Sunday on Main Street, near Our Lady Queen of Angels, where Arellano slept Saturday night and where she's held several press conferences Saturday and Sunday.

In a statement released Sunday night, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said that its "officers in Los Angeles today arrested criminal alien and immigration fugitive Elvira Arellano."

"Arellano, who was taken into custody without incident, is being processed for removal to Mexico based upon a deportation order originally issued by a federal immigration judge in 1997," the statment said. "Arresting and removing criminal aliens is one of ICE's top enforcement priorities and the agency will continue to pursue these cases vigorously."

Much of the anger from all parts of the political spectrum surrounding illegal immigration has been crystallized by Arellano's story. After entering the country illegally twice, she became an activist shortly after she was arrested in 2002 during a federal sweep at O'Hare International Airport, where Arellano cleaned airplanes. She was later convicted of using a fake Social Security card.

Rick Biesada, director and founder of the Chicago Minuteman Project, lauded the arrest, but he said it came a year too late.

"I was wondering why the police were dragging their feet," he said. "By not going in there and getting her, other illegals were going to churches seeking sanctuary. Now we're going to have hell to pay in this country trying to extract these people."

Local Spanish-language radio host Javier Salas said he felt badly for what happened to Arellano. But in leaving the sanctuary of Adalberto United Methodist Church and heading to Los Angeles, it was only a matter of time before she was arrested.

"I'm not happy that this happened, but it was bound to happen because she was challenging the system," said Salas, the host of the morning-drive talk show La Tremenda on WRTO AM-1200.

By Sunday afternoon Salas was already talking about the arrest on the radio, and callers were weighing in too.

Callers were "saying that she was traveling to Los Angeles and around the United States, she would provoke [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and the anti-immigrant groups," he said. "There would be checkpoints everywhere."

Salas questioned why it appeared that mainstream media make Arellano out to be the face of undocumented immigrants, when her actions have exacerbated the animosity toward them.

"She wasn't down to earth," he said, adding that Arellano acted "entitled" to rights "when there's thousands and thousands of people in the same situation."

"She made everything worse," Salas said. "She's not a face of the immigrants. My family without papers, she doesn't represent them."

Activists in the Chicago area who have followed Arellano's story weren't surprised that the law caught up to her.

"Everyone knew it was probably a question of when, not if " she would be arrested, said Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. "It just made me feel really sad because she knows she's looking at time in prison. I feel bad for her and for her child and for all the other people in that situation."

Hoyt said he met Arellano nearly three years ago after she was arrested in a sweep of undocumented immigrants working at O'Hare International Airport.

Arellano had been cleaning planes at night, he said. At the time --"before she was famous," Hoyt noted--she was afraid, intimidated and ashamed because she had been arrested by federal agents in front of her son.

"She was really emotional and really hurt. She was deeply offended that she would get arrested in front of her child and be treated like a criminal," Hoyt said. "She thought someone who comes here to work hard at night so she can support her child is not a criminal."

In the intervening years, however, she turned her pain to activism, organizing the families of those being deported, he said.

"I think she's an incredibly brave person who's put a human face on the suffering of the undocumented in this country and because of the cowardice of politicians, many more families are going to be destroyed and many more people are going to die on the borders," Hoyt said. "America needs to look itself in the face and ask if we want to be that kind of country."

The church where Arellano sought sanctuary for the last year became the command center where friends and organizers gathered to plan a vigil on Sunday night to show support for Arellano after her arrest.

Those who lived with her and knew her best at Alberto United Methodist Church cried together and hugged each other but quickly brushed aside the tears, channeling their grief into action.

Less than an hour after the arrest, Jacobita Alonso arrived at the front of the church in tears. For several minutes, people inside the church struggled to open the padlock on the gate that for a year had kept Arellano protected from the outside.

Work immediately began for a vigil, from phone calls to alert supporters to getting batteries for the speakers they would use to take their message to the street.

Jacobita Alonso, a lay leader at the church who stayed with Arellano on the second-floor apartment over the last year, felt propelled to action.

"We cannot sit here only grieving. All we can do is organize our people. We want her to know she is not alone. The community is crying. Her fight is a fight for all people," she said Sunday. "There are thousands of Elviras. There are thousands of mothers just like Elvira who just want to keep their families together."

Alonso and a dozen other supporters sat in the second-floor apartment where Arellano lived, watching television news broadcasts and sending out messages by e-mail.

The group has already organized a vigil for 7 p.m. at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office downtown at Congress Parkway and Clark Street and another at 9 a.m. at the same location to show support for Arellano, but also to protest the arrest.

George Atkins sat in the sanctuary, quitely observing.

"I'm sad she was arrested, but I'm proud that she was a member of this church and that I got to know her," Atkins said. "She always knew she could be arrested. She could have slipped quietly into the night like many others do but she chose to stand up for what she believed in."

Questions swirled up and down the church stairs. What would happen to Arellano's son? Where would Arellano go? Alonso said the boy was with Lozano, her closest advisor, but she wondered if he would be returned to Chicago, as Arellano had expressed hope to her many times before.

"All I can say is that miracles exist and we're praying," Alonso said.

Tribune staff reporters Emma Graves Fitzsimmons and Andrew L. Wang contributed to this report.

aolivo (at) tribune.com