08/26/2007

News / Breaking nation's laws should not be rewarded

Here is the Debra Saunders column published in today's print edition. Below it is the relevant Associated Press story from earlier in the week.

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Debra Saunders' column:

***

Elvira Arellano’s story starts out with the most understandable (if expedient and wrong-headed) rationale for breaking American immigration law.

Poor and Mexican, she figured that she could make a better life for herself if she crossed the border illegally and found work.

But the events that followed her initial crossing in 1997 — culminating in Arellano’s arrest and deportation Sunday — illustrate the corrosive effects that illegal immigration can have on those who break immigration law.

No wonder so many Americans opposed the so-called immigration reform package as they feared the bill would not only reward scofflaws, but support activists’ apparent belief that there is nothing wrong with flouting American law.

“We immigrants need representation,” Arellano complained last year, according to The Associated Press. “The millions of Mexican immigrants who are living in the U.S. are being treated like criminals. I’m not a criminal. I’m a mother who worked to support my son in this country.”

Actually, Arellano is a convicted felon.

When Arellano sneaked across the border in August 1997, she was caught and deported. Arellano then chose to break American law again. She re-entered the country — a felony that, if prosecuted, is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

In December 2002, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested Arellano at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport.

According to ICE, Arellano was “working illegally for a janitorial services business whose employees had access to security sensitive areas.” Subsequently, Arellano was convicted for using someone else’s Social Security number — a felony.

After three years of probation, Arellano was supposed to be deported in August 2006. Instead, she and her son Saul, 8, sought sanctuary at the Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago.

Last weekend, Arellano left the church to speak at a rally in Los Angeles, where she was arrested.

Arellano and her defenders argue that because Saul is a U.S. citizen, Elvira should not be forced to return to Mexico and that the U.S. government should not split up families.

Of course, if family unification were important to Elvira Arellano, she should have stayed in Mexico with her family.

CE spokeswoman Gail Montenegro noted that it is sad that the son will pay for his mother’s choices. And: “ICE is not in the business of separating families. Ultimately parents must take the responsibility for the outcome of their illegal actions or decisions.” And it’s odd how citizenship — her son’s, that is — suddenly is all important for Arellano, when it was a niggling detail when she chose to violate U.S. law.

Clearly, Arellano believes that she has not only a right to violate American law, but also that she should be rewarded for doing so. “God wants me to serve as an example of the hatred and hypocrisy of the current administration,” she told the Chicago Tribune.

It’s that attitude that has many Americans wondering why it took so long for authorities to deport Arellano.

Thank Congress. Illinois Democrats — Sen. Dick Durbin and Rep. Luis Guttierez — sponsored “private bills,” special legislation designed to help an individual or named group, to make Arellano a permanent resident. (Durbin cited Saul’s need for American health care due to a “medical emergency” — reportedly attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and other health problems.)

While the bills didn’t pass, they served to delay Arellano’s deportation.

While Arellano has urged supporters to pressure Durbin and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., to introduce “my private bill” again, neither senator has obliged.

Only the most overzealous activist would support the notion that national borders have no meaning or that a country should let foreigners break their laws, trade in fraudulent documents and violate deportation orders with impunity.

It’s bad enough that so many non-citizens freely break this country’s duly enacted laws. But when they feel that they can break our laws openly and without consequence, they have to go. Or all respect for the law will go.

***

Here is The Associated Press story:

TIJUANA, Mexico — An illegal immigrant who took refuge in a Chicago church for a year to avoid being separated from her American-born son was deported from the United States to Mexico, where 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.”

Arellano, who said she is a single mother, left her 8-year-old son, Saul, in the care of Coelman’s family. They were reunited Monday afternoon in Tijuana, but Arellano said her son would be going back to Chicago to live with his godmother and begin third grade in a public school.

“We’ve all been living together. He knows his mom is OK. He’s going to be sad sometimes,” said the godmother, Emma Lozano, who drove him from Los Angeles to Tijuana.

She also said the boy may tour the U.S. to promote migrant rights. The little boy declined to talk to a reporter.

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. Mexican authorities said the deportation highlighted a need to overhaul U.S. immigration laws.

“It’s tragic when a mother is separated from her son,” Cabrera said.

Arellano said she may return to her home in the Mexican state of Michoacan and then return to Tijuana in September for a demonstration coinciding with planned immigration protests in the United States.

Jim Hayes, director of ICE in Los Angeles, said “proper perspective” should be placed on the woman’s case. Using a false identity, as in the case of Arellano, who was convicted of using someone else’s Social Security number, 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.”

Anti-illegal immigrant groups applauded the arrest.

“Just because the woman has gone public and made an issue of the fact that she is defying law doesn’t mean the government doesn’t have to do its job,” said Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

Arellano arrived in Washington state illegally in 1997. She was soon deported to Mexico, 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 convicted of working under a false Social Security number. She was to surrender to authorities a year ago but instead sought refuge at the church on Aug. 15, 2006.

Immigration activists said they will continue Arellano’s plan to go to Washington, D.C., and take part in a prayer meeting and rally for immigration reform on Sept. 12. They also called for a national boycott on that date.

The sentiment was echoed outside an ICE office in Chicago on Monday.

“Her voice will not be silenced,” activist Jacobita Alonzo told a crowd of about 50 supporters.

Arellano asked to speak with Mexican officials in Los Angeles but was denied, Cabrera said. She was not given access until hours later, at San Diego’s Otay Mesa immigration detention center.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was unaware of any request that Arellano made to speak with Mexican officials in Los Angeles, and Arellano was given extensive access in San Diego Sunday night, agency spokeswoman Lauren Mack said.

Arellano was deported at San Diego’s San Ysidro border crossing around 10 p.m. PDT after U.S. authorities determined that she had exhausted her legal recourse.

“This was a very, very sensitive removal for us as well as Mexico,” Mack said

posted by Dick Hughes

http://www.statesmanjournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070825/BLOGS28/70825003/1046/OPINION

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