20 June 2007

A 12 June 2007 New York Times article stated that nine Republican Senators sent a letter to President Bush asking him to enforce current border regulations. At the heart of their request is an admission that the United States has many immigration policies; it simply does not enforce them to a large degree. This selective enforcement, and the consequences thereof, form a key part of new class action litigation filed today with the US Supreme Court on behalf of 6-year-old Saul Arellano and others. In their filing the lawyers argue the US government has purposefully ignored and selectively enforced its immigration and border regulations for so long that it should be held responsible for the outcome. Arellano’s mother is Elvira Arellano, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico who ten months ago took sanctuary against pending deportation, and separation from her US-citizen son, in Adalberto United Methodist Church in Humboldt Park. The church released a statement at a press conference announcing the filing:

This nation has operated a system of undocumented labor for decades to its own benefit and must now take responsibility for the families that were formed here and the children who were born here. To do less is an abdication of responsibility, an attack on basic family values…and the continuation of unspeakable cruelty and suffering for children and families.

Emma Lozano, the director of the Centro Sin Fronteras,, said that there are over five million childrenm “larger than some entire countries,” that are in a similar position to Saul Arellano, being a minor citizen with an undocumented parent. Calling it “the single largest domestic issue” in the country at the moment, Lozano encouraged US lawmakers to fix the “broken laws,” while stating that going before the Supreme Court is also a chance to stop the “destruction” of families.

Lozano was followed on the microphone by numerous parents and siblings, including Elvira Arellano, who are either undocumented themselves, or who have family under deportation orders, or in one case already deported. Father Juan Carlos Ruiz, a spokesperson for the New Sanctuary Movement, made the following statement to sum up the demands of the group; “As a national movement emerging in twenty different cities, we demand a stop of deportations, of the separation of parents from their children, husbands from their wives; we do demand a stop on deportations until the law is fixed. It is a crime of justice; it is an offense, an insult to God, to somehow treat our brothers and sisters who are immigrants, as criminal. So we cry out, demanding a moratorium from all deportations, and all raids.”