Immigration activists take up cause of woman seeking sanctuary
DON BABWIN
Associated Press
Aug 17, 2006
Immigration activists from California to South Carolina are taking up the cause of a woman who has holed up in a friendly church for two days with her young son rather than turn herself in to be deported to Mexico.
Immigration officials say there is nothing preventing them from removing Elvira Arellano from Adalberto United Methodist Church and sending her back to Mexico. But they're not addressing how and when they plan to end the standoff, and Arellano already has put the storefront church at the center of the debate over illegal immigration.
"She is the face of the movement," said Emma Lozano, executive director for Centro Sin Fronteras, who was at the church with Arellano. Arellano's 7-year-old son Saul, who is a U.S. citizen, is living at the church with his mother.
Even before her story made much of a splash outside Chicago, word of what was happening at the church spread like a brush fire among immigration activists across the country.
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