Mexican woman deported from Chicago vows hunger strike in push for changes
MEXICO CITY --A Mexican migrant-rights advocate deported from the U.S. said she began a hunger strike Friday to push her government to demand its citizens receive better treatment north of the border.
Elvira Arellano, a former illegal migrant who took sanctuary at Chicago's Adalberto United Methodist Church for about a year in defiance of a deportation order, said she would starve herself "because I want our government to listen, to act, to defend our migrant families."
Speaking to a group of Mexican migrant activists, Arellano decried U.S. efforts to jail illegal migrants, put up security fences on the border and step up deportations.
"Is Mexico prepared to receive all of these deported people and their families?" Arellano said on the opening day of the "First Parliament of Mexican Migrant Leaders Who Live in the U.S."
"Is it prepared to guarantee an education to their children, who are U.S. citizens? Or is it prepared to defend them against all these attacks?" she said.
The two-day conference, gathering Mexican-led activist groups and U.S.-based non-governmental organizations, kicked off on the floor of Mexico's lower house of Congress. Along with opposing aggressive anti-immigrant measures in the U.S., participants want Mexico to reform its own laws by decriminalizing the migration of Central Americans and others to Mexico.
They also want Mexico to work to improve economic and social conditions to stem the tide of migration.
Arellano had lived in the United States illegally for several years with her young son when she came to the attention of immigration authorities. She lived at the Chicago church for about a year in defiance of a deportation order, but left in August and was arrested and deported after giving an immigration speech in Los Angeles.
Members of the Front for Mexicans Abroad, a grass-roots migrant-rights group in the U.S., held a small protest outside congress on Friday, claiming the event's participants are allied with President Felipe Calderon and do not represent migrants' best interests.