Prominent Immigration Activist Leaves Church Sanctuary
A well-known immigration activist who has become an international symbol for the struggles of illegal immigrant parents has for the first time left the church which she has been taking refuge in to avoid deportation.
Elvira Arellano left the Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago to attend an immigration rights rally in Los Angeles, The Associated Press reported Saturday.
Emma Lozano, head of the immigration rights group Centro Sin Fronteras, said Arellano was traveling to California by car, but declined to say whether her 8-year-old son, Saul, was with her. She also declined to give details on when Arellano left the Chicago church, though Arellano gave a press conference on Wednesday at the sanctuary.
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"She's not alone and she's got a lot of company and on her way," Lozano said Friday night, according to AP. "And she'll be here tomorrow, so we're really looking forward to that."
The mother and son team have been at the forefront of the immigration battle, making frequent media appeals for the government to pass a more humane immigration reform bill. Both have taken refuge in the Chicago church for the past year.
In Los Angeles, Arellano planned to participate in the immigrant rights march set for Saturday morning and hold a press conference at La Placita Catholic Church.
Arellano has taken refuge in the Chicago church since Aug. 15, 2006, after immigration officers ordered her to turn herself over to authorities for deportation.
She first illegally immigrated to the United States in 1997 but was then shortly deported back to Mexico. She again crossed the border and made her way to Illinois in 2000 where she worked at O'Hare International Airport cleaning planes.
She was arrested in 2002 at O'Hare and later convicted of working under a false Social Security number.
On Wednesday, the one year anniversary of her stay at the church, Arellano announced her plans to travel to Washington, D.C. together with her son to lobby for immigration reform on Sept. 12.
Arellano risks being arrested by federal agents and being deported while away from the church. She plans to pray and fast for eight hours at the National Mall to pressure Congress to pass more lenient immigration reforms, according to the Chicago Tribune.
"God has protected me for this long year," Arellano said, in both English and Spanish during a press conference on Wednesday. "But I cannot sit by now and watch the lives of mothers and fathers like me and children like Saul be destroyed."
"If this government would separate me from my son, let them do it in front of the men and women who have the responsibility to fix this broken law and uphold the principles of human dignity," Arellano said.
Earlier this summer, an immigration bill that would have provided a path for 12 million illegal immigrants to become citizens was derailed when the Senate failed to garner enough votes to limit debate and move toward final passage of the legislation.
Although immigrant groups and Christian Hispanic organizations admit that the bill was not perfect, for the most part they supported the bill that would allow immigrants to stay in the United States while enacting penalties on immigrants for illegally crossing the border.
"Everyone knows that our immigration laws are broken," Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said after the bill failed, according to CNN. "And a country loses some of its greatness when it can't fix a problem that everyone knows is broken. And that's what happened today."
The bill was the product of a bipartisan group of senators and the White House after months of negotiations.
Immigration reform has been a central domestic issue for President Bush for years and the bill was the last chance for the president to pass a bill before the presidential election consumes Washington's attention.
"Legal immigration is one of the top concerns of the American people and Congress' failure to act on it is a disappointment," Bush said upon hearing the bill's failure to pass the Senate, according to AP. "A lot of us worked hard to see if we couldn't find common ground. It didn't work."
Many churches and Christian leaders have recently become more vocal in their support of a comprehensive immigration reform bill that would treat illegal immigrants humanely based on how the Bible teaches believers to treat strangers.
Moreover, Metropolitan churches across the nation have offered their buildings as sanctuaries to shield illegal immigrants from law enforcement officers – similar to how the Chicago church housed Arellano and her son.
However, experts say that Arellano leaving the sanctuary next month could further complicate the situation for the government.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, had the legal authority to arrest Arellano over the past year but avoided the confrontation of raiding the church to capture the high-profile illegal immigrant.
Her public advocacy in Washington will be a challenge to law enforcements to arrest her according to law.
