Immigrant Rights Activist Elvira Arellano Deported
By Terry Keleher

Elvira Arellano was arrested in downtown Los Angeles yesterday, after deciding last week to leave a Chicago church where she and her 8 year old son had lived for a year in sanctuary since openly defying a deportation order. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced today that they have deported Elvira Arellano to Mexico following her bold protest of the U.S. government’s inhumane treatment of millions of undocumented immigrants currently living and working in the U.S.

I’m saddened over the developments and am still wondering how this 32 year old single mother, former janitor and Mexican immigrant became a “criminal,” “fugitive,” and “alien.” Her illegal re-entry into the United States is considered a felony violation punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

I first met Elvira at a Public Truth Hearing on Racial Profiling organized by the Applied Research Center, Amnesty International and 50 other organizational co-sponsors in Chicago in 2003. In her soft-spoken voice, she courageously testified about how, early one morning in December 2002, while readying her son for school, agents from the Department of Homeland Security and FBI surrounded her home and knocked on her door. Eight federal agents entered her home and handcuffed and detained her in front of her terrified child. The agents threatened to take her son away. She, like so many other immigrants caught up in the post 9/11 hysteria, was treated as a terrorist suspect.

Along with 45 other O’Hare airport workers, she was arrested that morning as part of Operation Tarmac, which involved raids and thousands of arrests at airports across the country. The operation was directed at undocumented immigrants, but in the end, not one of the targeted immigrants was charged with terrorist activity.

Initially, Arellano was reluctant to speak out, but at the Public Truth hearing she brought a human face to the racist and discriminatory practices being carried out in the name of national security, testifying that, “since I’ve been arrested, I haven’t been able to work…I’m not a criminal. These laws do not protect the weak and the poor. We have to be brave and speak out about the injustice.”

Since her arrest in 2003, Arellano has been at the forefront of local immigrant rights struggles. She helped form a new organization called Latino Families United to fight for legalization, citizenship, and voter registration of immigrants. In 2006, she participated in a 22-day hunger strike to bring public attention to proposed federal immigration policies, which focused on punitive measures against undocumented immigrants and militarization of the border. “The message is for President Bush to put a moratorium on all raids and to tell him that immigration laws are separating families,” she said. “If there is no legalization process, our people are going to continue dying crossing the border.”

In the summer of 2006, Arellano, at the age of 31, took her boldest action yet. On the day she was ordered to report to federal officials to be deported, she and her son took refuge at the Adolberto United Methodist Church on the west side of Chicago, openly defying orders to surrender herself to law enforcement agents. Congressman Bobby Rush has called her the “Rosa Parks of the immigrant rights movement.” Her deep convictions and bold act of defiance helped galvanize community support for legalization and human rights for all immigrants. Her stand-off with the authorities attracted local, national and international media coverage to the plight of millions of undocumented immigrants in the U.S with similar stories.

She’s had her share of detractors, both from anti-immigrant organizations as well as those within the immigrant rights movement.

But Arellano has remained steadfast in her conviction that immigrants like her should not be treated as criminals in an unfair system. Her primary aspiration has been to provide the best life and opportunities possible for her son.

Arellano told her story to the most powerful law enforcement agencies in the world, knowing that at any time she could be deported and separated indefinitely from her young son. She refused to be silent when too many people were suffering and dying. She was unwilling to be a powerless victim. Instead, she stood up to the racism and injustices of U.S. immigration and anti-terrorist policies, with the hope of changing for the better the fates of millions of immigrants in the U.S. As the U.S. continues to grapple with its immigration policy, hopefully Elvira’s courage and conviction will not have been in vain.