SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS December 6, 2006 Migrant in limbo, but still in U.S.CHICAGO — When first awakened by his mother to get ready for school, the young boy grumbled but then offered a sly smile and began rolling under the covers with his puppy, Daisy. After sipping some juice, a still-sleepy Saúl Arellano, 7, kissed his mom, Elvira, on the cheek and waved goodbye to Daisy. Walking down the steps of the storefront church where he shares a single bed with his mom, he suddenly stopped and turned around. He smiled. She smiled. He walked out into the morning chill. It was anything but a typical morning send-off. Instead of his mom, a church volunteer drove Saúl to school. Had she stepped outside, Elvira Arellano would have been promptly arrested and sent back to Mexico. For nearly four months, Arellano, 31, an undocumented immigrant, has chosen self-imposed imprisonment to avoid deportation. Risky and dramatic, so far her stay at Adalberto United Methodist Church in west Chicago has paid off. While some are calling Arellano's action brave defiance, others say it's folly in need of swift punishment. Likely fearing a public relations backlash, immigration agents haven't shown up at the church to arrest her. But if they remain absent, thousands of other migrants may be encouraged to seek religious protection to try to stay in the country. Arellano's controversial case is emblematic of the ongoing national immigration crisis. Immigrant advocates argued she's simply a hardworking mother trying to give her son a decent life. Immigration restrictionists maintained she's an outlaw using her son as a pawn to obtain amnesty, insulting immigrants who came legally. Stuck between the two political extremes is the government, playing a seemingly losing game of political ping-pong, showing human compassion while also calling for stringent enforcement in the name of national security. In an interview in the church's second-floor office that she has turned into a center of operations for her cause, Arellano said her struggle has exposed the government's diabolical immigration policies. She's not going anywhere, she insisted, so if agents want to arrest her, they know where to find to her. "I didn't come here to rob anybody," she said. "But I'm treated like the worst criminal in the world. I still prefer to be called a criminal than leave my son to die from hunger." The government isn't saying why it hasn't already sent Arellano packing. Gail Montenegro, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Chicago, refused an interview and didn't respond to repeated requests for statistics on immigrant arrests and deportations in the Windy City area. She referred to a statement the agency released Aug. 16, the day after Arellano moved into the church: "ICE is required to enforce the nation's immigration laws and ensure that they are applied fairly, without regard for a person's ability to generate public support."
Seeking a future Arellano wasn't always such a risk-taker. In fact, for most of her nine years in the United States, she remained like most undocumented migrants: living in the shadows, steering as far as she could from government officials. Arellano was raised in a small town in Michoacán, one of the top Mexican states with U.S.-bound defectors. Like countless Mexicans living inland at the time, she sought work in border maquiladoras, or assembly plants. She worked for a year in Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, but then decided to try for higher-paying jobs north of the Rio Grande. She was 22 when she tried entering the United States through a port of entry in California with another person's temporary visa card. A border official caught her and she was deported. Three days later, another attempt succeeded and she made her way to Yakima, Wash., quickly finding steady work with a laundry service. It was there that "Saulito," as she calls him, was born. Arellano declined to talk about the boy's father, who left her when she was pregnant, according to court papers. Encouraged by relatives and friends, she moved to Chicago in 2000, landing a job cleaning airplanes at O'Hare International Airport. Two years later she was among hundreds of immigrants arrested at numerous airports across the country as part of a sweep dubbed "Operation Tarmac." Most were automatically deported. Some, like Arellano, were prosecuted for using another person's Social Security card to get the cleaning job. She was sentenced to three years' probation. With her case seen as a symbol of the more than 3 million citizen-by-birth children with undocumented parents, Arellano quickly drew support from pro-immigrant groups. Then big-name politicians such as Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., got in the act. Arellano was supposed to be deported in September 2003, but the process was frozen for nearly three years after the introduction of several "private bills," a rarely used congressional tool giving migrants legal status. The bills never passed, but Arellano continued receiving extensions until a technicality this year allowed ICE to order her deported Aug. 15.
Church sanctuary In desperation, she asked her pastor, the Rev. Walter Coleman, to take her in, hoping immigration agents wouldn't dare raid the church. Coleman won approval from his leaders to offer Arellano religious sanctuary and repeatedly has vowed to support her as long as she needs him. His actions hark back to the 1980s, when a national church-led movement took in and transported thousands of undocumented Central Americans fleeing brutal civil wars. "The context has changed but the need to keep families together is compelling," said the Rev. John Fife in Tucson, co-founder of the Sanctuary Movement. "The Arellano case has awakened church leaders to rise up once again." And it quickly turned Arellano into a celebrity. Not a day goes by where she's not being interviewed. Numerous Mexican outlets check in with her daily, seeking updates. She's constantly moving about the small apartment, fielding incessant calls on her cell phone, adding another newspaper clipping to piles cluttering her bedroom floor, checking and sending e-mail messages. She said she doesn't feel trapped. The days fly by and if she needs some fresh air, she has a terrace. Many activists have likened her as the immigrant movement's Rosa Parks, recalling the black activist whose refusal to cede her bus seat to a white man helped spark the civil rights movement in the 1950s. "We've been able to use Elvira's example to educate our community about what's wrong with our immigration system," said Alejandro Molina, a high school teacher who takes students to the church so they can hear Arellano tell her story. The recognition has extended to Saúl, who has traveled the country lobbying on behalf of his mother. He garnered international headlines last month when she agreed to send him to Mexico City, at the invitation of a congressman who successfully pushed for a resolution asking President Bush to rescind Arellano's deportation order.
Legal limbo Predictably, there has been as much opposition as support for Arellano's cause. To people advocating immigration restrictions, she has become a target. To them, her open defiance of the government is the ultimate mockery of law and order. People like Dave Gorak, executive director of the Midwest Coalition to Reduce Immigration, don't buy the argument that her deportation would break up the family. She can — and should — take her son with her back to Mexico, Gorak said. And as much as her supporters argue that the case has brought together Latinos from various nationalities and backgrounds, some see Arellano as a threat. Many working-class Puerto Ricans, U.S. citizens by law, said undocumented immigrants like Arellano are taking jobs away from them by accepting lower wages and never reporting abuses on the job. "Take her away! Ship them all out!" exclaimed one of four men playing dominoes — none would provide their names — at Jayuya Barber Shop across the street from Arellano's church. "If they let her stay, then millions more are going to come over and want the same thing. Can you imagine that? We've got enough problems as it is now," another man chimed in. Arellano apparently will find no relief in the courts. Despite her claims to the contrary, U.S. laws supersede religious sanctuary protections, said Steve Lubet, a law professor at Northwestern University in Chicago. A last-ditch legal attempt failed this summer, when the Rev. Coleman sued the government, arguing Arellano's deportation would deprive her son of his civil rights as a citizen. The lawsuit was thrown out. The case, now more than ever, simply is about politics. Pardoning Arellano would evoke the controversial notion of amnesty, while kicking her out would show the government is truly serious about cracking down on illegal immigration. So the stalemate continues. "They don't do anything, they simply let the situation fester. It's called smoke and mirrors: Creating the illusion you're enforcing the law, but you're not really doing it," explained Jan Ting, former assistant immigration commissioner in the early 1990s who now teaches law at Temple University in Philadelphia. Lingering in limbo may not be Arellano's ideal scenario, but she'll gladly take it. She gets to stay both in the country and next to her son.
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