TIJUANA, Mexico — An illegal entrant who took refuge in a Chicago church for a year to avoid being separated from her American-born son has been deported from the United States to Mexico.
In Tijuana, she vowed Monday to continue her campaign to change U.S. immigration laws.
Elvira Arellano, 32, became an activist and a national symbol for illegal-immigrant parents as she defied her deportation order and spoke out from her sanctuary. She announced last week that she was leaving the Adalberto United Methodist Church to try to lobby U.S. lawmakers.
She had just spoken at a Los Angeles rally when she was arrested Sunday outside Our Lady Queen of Angels Church and deported, said the Rev. Walter Coleman, pastor of Adalberto United Methodist.
"They were in a hurry to deport me because they saw that I was threatening to mobilize and organize the people to fight for legalization," Arellano said in Spanish outside a Tijuana apartment building where she was staying with a friend. "I have a fighting spirit, and I'm going to continue fighting."
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Arellano, who said she is a single mother, left her 8-year-old son, Saul, in the care of Coleman's family. She said he might be brought to her in Tijuana sometime Monday.
"He is a little bit sick because of the situation we find ourselves in," she said. "I'm going to ask if he wants to stay with me or if he wants to return to his school" in the United States.
The boy hid behind the pastor's wife and wiped away tears during a news conference in Los Angeles. Mexican authorities did not know the identity or whereabouts of the boy's father, said Luis Cabrera, Mexico's general consul in San Diego.
Opponents of illegal immigration said Arellano's arrest was overdue, and a U.S. immigration official said she had been a criminal fugitive.
Arellano arrived in Washington state illegally in 1997. She was deported to Mexico shortly afterward but returned and moved to Illinois in 2000, taking a job cleaning planes at O'Hare International Airport.
She was arrested in 2002 at O'Hare and was convicted of working under a false Social Security number. Instead of surrendering to authorities last August, she sought refuge at the church. She had not left the church property until she decided to travel by car to Los Angeles, Coleman said.
Jim Hayes, director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Los Angeles, said a "proper perspective" should be placed on Arellano's case. Using a false identity can be a threat to national security, he said.
"We don't think she's a martyr," Hayes said. "She was a criminal fugitive who is in violation of the law."
