LOS ANGELES, Aug. 20 — The federal authorities said Monday that the deporting of a Mexican woman who had sought refuge in churches while being an advocate for illegal immigrant families had not signaled a crackdown on religious groups that provide aid to illegal immigrants.
Elvira Arellano, an illegal immigrant, and her son, Saul, at Our Lady Queen of Angels church in Los Angeles last Saturday.
The woman, Elvira Arellano, 32, had defied a federal deportation order by spending much of the past year in a Chicago church seeking to raise awareness of how deportations can separate families. Ms. Arellano left the church over the weekend to visit churches around the country, joined by her 8-year-old son, Saul, who was born in the United States.
On Sunday, after she spoke at Our Lady Queen of Angels, a Roman Catholic church in downtown Los Angeles, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stopped her car a few blocks away and arrested her.
Jim Hayes, the immigration agency’s Los Angeles field office director, said Ms. Arellano’s arrest was not a “message to the sanctuary movement as much as it is a message to criminal illegal aliens who are fugitives, that we are going to continue to target them.”
Mr. Hayes said Ms. Arellano had been deported once before, after entering the country illegally in 1997. She re-entered and was convicted in 2002 of a felony, using a false Social Security card, which she used to acquire a job cleaning airplanes at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago.
“We will find them, and we will deport them,” Mr. Hayes said of criminal illegal immigrants.
Ms. Arellano’s supporters said she had grown frustrated that the immigration debate had receded from the forefront of public attention in recent weeks.
“I think she took a risk in the name of a mission, and I think she is accomplishing that mission,” said the Rev. Alexia Salvatierra, a leader in the New Sanctuary Movement, a coalition of groups arranging church accommodations for illegal immigrants nationwide, eight of whom have made their presence publicly known.
“Immigration rights activists are going to be unified and galvanized by this,” Ms. Salvatierra said. “There is a Rosa Parks quality to this.”
People opposed to illegal immigration held little sympathy for Ms. Arellano. Representative Brian P. Bilbray, Republican of California, said the immigration authorities had done the right thing.
“I don’t think because she comes here and has a child that she somehow deserves to be treated any different from anybody else who broke the law,” Mr. Bilbray said.
A federal judge ordered Mr. Arellano deported last August and, instead of surrendering to immigration agents, she sought safe harbor at Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago, where she denounced immigration raids that separate families with both citizens and illegal immigrants as members.
Mr. Hayes of the immigration agency said that her fugitive status and felony conviction, not her public advocacy, had made her a high priority though he took note of it and said that it had only made her easier to find than other illegal immigrants with criminal records.
“This country’s immigration system, as generous as it is, should not be exploited by those who disagree with it,” Mr. Hayes said at a news conference here. “I.C.E. has a sworn duty to ensure that our nation’s immigration laws are applied fairly and without regard for a person’s ability to generate public support.”
He declined to say why Ms. Arellano was not arrested sooner at the church in Chicago, though immigration agents generally do not make arrests on religious property. The agency, Mr. Hayes said, makes arrests at a time that will “minimize the danger to the public, the danger to our officers and the people that are targeted, and we found that opportunity yesterday.”
After her arrest on Sunday, Ms. Arellano said goodbye to her son and placed him in the care of leaders of the Chicago church, who were traveling with her.
Ms. Arellano was escorted to a border crossing in San Diego and then walked into Tijuana, Mexico, late Sunday. She was reported to be staying with friends there.
On Monday, her son was taken to Tijuana to visit her while supporters planned their next move, which they said would include seeking a Congressional bill authorizing her return.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/us/21immigrant.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin
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