No Sanctuary: Elvira Arellano Deported Without Son

Tram Nguyen

No Sanctuary: Elvira Arellano Deported Without Son

Elvira Arellano was deported to Mexico after seeking sanctuary in a church for a year. She leaves her eight year old son with friends, and promises to continue her fight for the rights of immigrant families.

I met Elvira a year ago, in the fall of 2006, a few months after she had taken sanctuary in a Chicago church. A petite woman of 31, she had long brown hair tied in a ponytail, and she was wearing sweatpants and flip-flops when she greeted me upstairs in her small quarters at the church. She looked young and even a bit hip, except for the careworn, slightly sad expression in her eyes.

Arellano had entered the church on August 15, 2006 instead of reporting to the Department of Homeland Security for deportation as ordered. That summer, a storm of controversy raged in the media and around the little storefront church located on, ironically enough, Division Street. An illegal immigrant and a single mother who had dared to defy the law in such a public fashion, who claimed that she was obeying a higher, moral law to provide for her child by staying in this country where she had worked menial jobs without papers for nine years—she touched a raw nerve in a nation five years-deep into its post-9/11 immigration debate.

She was cast as the face of all immigrants trying to make a better life for their children; she was portrayed as a trespasser who bore an “anchor baby” in order to secure her future on U.S. soil. But beyond the controversy surrounding her, Arellano and her young son Saul most of all embody the lived experience of almost every immigration policy and its devastating consequences.

In late 2002, Arellano and Saul were sleeping in their apartment when eight ICE agents knocked on the door. “I woke him up because we had to go, and he looked at everyone who was in the room with their radios and guns, and he started to scream,” she recalled. “Since he was panicking, I hugged him and told him to calm down and to not ask me questions please, and I hugged him very hard. I told him that they would take me and that he would stay with the babysitter.”

Arellano, who worked at O’Hare Airport cleaning planes at the time, had been arrested as part of Operation Tarmac. Deployed as an airport security initiative in response to the Sept. 11 attacks, Tarmac was one of the first post-9/11 policies to target immigrant workers in the war on terror. As the secret detentions post-9/11 were taking place, federal agents initiated arrests at airports across the country, starting with 29 Mexican workers in Denver detained late September 2001 for document fraud. By December, the airport sweeps had become a multi-agency undertaking that continued into 2002 and eventually jailed more than 1,000 mostly Latino airport workers.

Targeted first as a security threat, Arellano then entered the deportation system as a criminal alien and eventually was sent the notice, known as a “bag and baggage” letter, that immigrants receive when they are ordered to report with a suitcase packed for deportation. “I thought, but why, I am not a criminal. I am not stealing, nor did I kill anyone. I didn’t want to steal an airplane, you see,” she said. “Why do they take the taxes and accept my manual labor for nine years? Why do they accept my taxes but cannot accept the fact that I have human rights?”
As an undocumented worker at the beginning of the post-9/11 crackdown, Arellano was among the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who from the very beginning were being affected by government campaigns such as the airport sweeps, the Social Security Administration sending “no-match” letters to employers who then used them to fire or intimidate workers, and the launching of the Absconder Apprehension Initiative to track and pursue more than 300,000 “fugitive aliens” with outstanding deportation orders.

After the immigrant rights marches last year, and throughout the campaign for national reform legislation, Arellano’s sanctuary stance came to signify the larger dilemma facing millions of families with undocumented and mixed legal status.

There were other ways to get by. She could have appealed for individual amnesty through sympathetic politicians; she could have perhaps taken deportation and tried crossing the border again, as she’d done before. Or she could have simply tried to disappear and work underground, joining the hundreds of thousands of “fugitive” absconders who are periodically pursued in government raids.

But Arellano took the risk of speaking out. She joined a long tradition of social change by not just living with injustice but bringing her experience to the public sphere. The fact that she generated such indignation by this action points to the depth of her challenge to an untenable, fundamentally flawed immigration system and a culture that has yet to face it honestly.

“I’ve learned so much, and I feel strong and peaceful,” Elvira Arellano told me that day in Chicago. “I have faith that it will be possible for me to stay in this country and for all families to stay together.”

Posted at 12:45 PM, Aug 20, 2007 in Immigration | Permalink | View Comments

Comments

While do agree that targeting her as a security threat and arresting her with guns is over the top, I have trouble understanding the injustice that occurred. I was married to an immigrant from Yugoslavia. He had to file papers before we married when he was a student and he had to file papers afterwards. Without those, he couldn't stay. That's the law. When I went to visit his family, I had to file papers and have my visit approved by Yugo's government. That's the law.

So... how is her disregard for the law unjust to her? People focus immigration reform as an attack on Mexicans, but immigrants come from all over. And why should Mexican immigrants get preferential treatment over other immigrants?

That is the part of this debate that I just cannot understand. I feel like I'm missing something and it's so frustrating. So if someone can break this down, please do so.

She deserves what she got. She made a life choice to have a child in a situation that she new was tenuous at best. She broke the law not once but on several occasions and she has to pay the price. Obviously she is not a responsible parent not only for bringing a child into this situation but also abandoning the child by leaving him here.

the treaty of guadalupe-hidalgo, which ended the mexican american war gave rights to mexicans that were on what was changed from mexican to american soil. they were guarantyeed property and civil rights. those rights, and 14th amendment rights were violated constantly.

the purge became outrageous during the depression.

http://www.neta.com/~1stbooks/TGH.html

http://campusapps.fullerton.edu/news/200 5/valenciana.html

http://www.houstonculture.org/hispanic/c onquest5.html

http://rhr.dukejournals.org/cgi/reprint/ 2005/93/107.pdf

http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/stor y.asp?id=6549

http://www.sliversandscribbles.com/Resou rces/Righting%20Deportation's%20Wron.pd f

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa 3935/is_200601/ai_n17184253

http://www.hispanicvista.com/HVC/Opinion /Guest_Columns/031406Oguest.htm

http://info.sen.ca.gov/pub/05-06/bill/se n/sb_0601-0650/sb_645_cfa_20050627_12452 8_asm_comm.html

http://www.titanmag.com/2005/valenciana/ index.html

http://www.vpcomm.umich.edu/admissions/r esearch/expert/sugru7.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/cr ossing_continents/6191862.stm

http://www.nps.gov/history/history/onlin e_books/5views/5views5h84.htm

http://www.aztlan.net/default6.htm

http://memory.loc.gov/learn/features/imm ig/mexican6.html

quite often, this displacement was disguised with the euphemism of repatriation by the us government. here is a site on that.

http://www.losrepatriados.org/

mexicans that come here, quite often have a right to an american birthright that was stolen, as the descendants of the oppressed people whose rights were violated.

This is in response to Andrew Harbert and summer, who posted above:

Everyone has the duty to disobey an unjust law. There are many such unjust laws in the United States. In the case of immigration policy, refusing to report to the Department of Homeland Security is resisting the U.S. government's imperial policy, which steals land and resources in other countries, implements governments that allow the U.S. government and U.S. corporations to do this, and enforces these policies through hostility, violence, and repressive laws. This basically serves to hold people around the world in poverty, with those awful conditions consistently deteriorating. For instance, in El Salvador, the cost of corn, a staple of the Salvadoran government, doubled in the last month at the hand of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) policies. Thus, in an effort at basic survival, people like Elvira Arellano uproot their entire lives, leaving family and culture to come to the U.S., undocumented if they must. How, in any way, Andrew Harbert, does anyone deserve this treatment?

Some people do have privilege to be documented, but many do not. Many who are rejected for citizenship or even a visa are people of color, and many who are accepted have white skin. Thus, it is easier for some immigrants to achieve status than others, and this has been the case throughout history, although who is considered white has shifted and changed.

Mexican immigrants do not receive preferential treatment, nor have they ever. They are forced into poverty in their own country through NAFTA and other repressive policies and agreements. Then, they are criminalized when they cross a very dangerous border to attempt to survive here in the U.S., receiving little recognition and even fewer rights. Thus, deporting Elvira Arellano to Mexico represents this atrocious and unjust history.

The United States is full of stories like hers, and this country depends on people like her-to clean schools, to provide healthcare to elders, to care for children, to harvest food. To give undocumented workers human rights is long-since overdue, as they are the real heroes of this country.

I agree with Jacoby Ballard; if those who have studied Greek philosophy (namely Socrates) during his trial, Euthyphro, a judge who presided over his fate, said there are unjust laws and people will not obey them. And we must realize and understand that when times are bad for a group or individual, borders have no meaning. They are artificial (arbitrary?) lines on a map drawn by states to define a region, but they cannot define movement of people who are seeking a better life. Anyone who recognizes the borders of Arab countries in North Africa know lines separate people and families as well. (Question: how can you draw a straight line in the sand?)
I think America owes a debt to (illegal) immigrants, for without them, our economy will bottom out.
American history is a story of immigrants, and the author is correct that the paler the skin, the easier is to be "accepted" into this racist society. There was shameful bias toward the Southern and Eastern European peoples during the latter part of the 19th and earlier twentieth centuries.
The immigration subject is one based on current emotions of our time when public opinion is searching for a scapegoat for what ails the country. We're targeting our anger at the wrong people. Deporting her will not solve the problem; rather it makes it worse. Is that our answer now? Send in goons with guns to kick people out?

nope, still don't get it. if this push for immigration reform were consistent across the board to all immigrants, that would be one thing. but it's not. otherwise, explain the treatment of haitians.

jacoby states, "Many who are rejected for citizenship or even a visa are people of color, and many who are accepted have white skin." I think that's a gross oversimplification of the citizenship and visa process. Though I don't deny in America that some color-based biases still affect things (again, see Haitians), nobody's standing at a door waving the white immigrants in. Again, my ex is white. He was not given a free pass.

I just don't like being insulted. People need to change the name from immigration reform to immigration reform for Mexican immigrants only. For everyone else, no news stories will be written about their deportation.

summer: it may seem like Mexican immigrants might get unfair, undue preferential treatment under future immigration reform, but the reality is we share a border with Mexico (and Canada, for that matter) and our current immigration system does not acknowledge this very important and very basic fact. If we can't agree that there are profound privilege and race issues that guide our immigration system, we might be able to agree that, in location, in economics, and in relation to the US, Mexico is very different from Yugoslavia.

When it is beneficial to the US, the US exploits this fact. NAFTA allows almost complete transparency of the borders for corporations. As others have noted, this transparency has been mostly to the detriment of the Mexican people. If large American corporations can trounce Mexican markets nearly unhindered, why is it unfair if we afford Mexican workers, often fleeing the economic havoc wreaked by these American corporations, the same courtesy?

NAFTA is only the greatest example in very recent history of the US's "special" relationship with Mexico. Go beyond the past decade and we will see more, from the Treaty of Hidalgo to the Bracero Program.

In the end, most components of the proposed immigration reforms from both sides of the aisle will affect all immigrants the same. From how I see it, any special Mexican-only parts exist to deal with the undeniably particular relationship we have.

Thanks, Alexandria. That's the most honest, direct answer I've heard about this by far. This is the way that it should be discussed. This does not cause me to automatically shut my mind in frustration.