Illegal immigrant was the face of controversy

She was like a mannequin in that little storefront church on Division.

All the baggage people carried about illegal immigrants, they pinned on her.

They dressed her up as a villain, a lawbreaker, a felon.

They dressed her up as a civil rights hero, a modern-day Rosa Parks, a martyr.

Elvira Arellano, who eluded deportation by holing up in a Chicago church, became a national and international symbol of the illegal immigration debate.

Now back in her native Mexico, the single, unemployed mother struggles to balance activism and survival.

In 2002, U.S. immigration officials arrested Arellano at O'Hare International Airport, where she was working illegally as a janitor. She was convicted of using another person's Social Security number to gain employment.

She was supposed to surrender to authorities in August 2006 but instead took sanctuary with her then-8-year-old son, Saul, in the Adalberto United Methodist Church.

She remained there for a year.

Arellano was arrested and deported this August, about a decade after her initial deportation order and shortly after leaving her church sanctuary to attend a rally in Los Angeles.

Though she had vowed to keep American-born Saul in the United States, where he could receive a better education and help for a learning disability, Saul joined Arellano in Mexico in September.

Remaining with Saul, who frequently appeared on Arellano's behalf at immigration rallies and events, had been a pillar of her push to stay in the United States.

Since returning to her native San Miguel Curahuango, in the Mexican state of Michoacan, Arellano has used her celebrity to keep the spotlight on immigration reform. She described her new life in a phone interview from Mexico conducted in Spanish.

Mexico

Arellano and Saul now live with her parents in a rural town of about 13,000.

The family heats water on a fire and uses the bathroom in Arellano's sister's home while one is being built at her parents' house.

"It's very different, but we have had fun with it, too," she said.

Saul initially didn't want to move to Mexico, which he had visited only once.

But now he loves to spend time with his grandparents, aunts and uncles, and plays and rides his bike with his 14 cousins, Arellano said.

In the United States, Saul was a good student, but in Mexico, he initially struggled with all-Spanish instruction. Adalberto United Methodist Church sends $65 per month to keep Saul in private school, because he missed the public school enrollment date.

When Arellano announced she was taking Saul with her to Mexico, her critics crowed, saying her justification for remaining in the states had been a sham.

Arellano insists she had intended to keep Saul in America, but found the separation too painful.

"I wanted to give him the opportunities I never had," she said. "But this way we are together, and we can continue focusing on what is important."

Arellano maintains her activist role as a representative of the Familia Latina Unida (United Latino Family) campaign, which she started while in Chicago.

Mexicans who have lived in the United States and wealthier Mexicans who have access to international cable TV channels often recognize her on the street, she said.

In November, she staged a 12-day hunger strike for immigrant rights and a four-day protest in front of the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City.

Her latest cause is pushing for immigration reform in Mexico, where Central American immigrants often are held in detention centers with abhorrent living conditions.

"However badly immigrants are treated in the United States, here it's a lot worse. It's inhuman," she said.

Finding work in Mexico has proved difficult. Her only source of income is writing weekly columns for a Spanish-language newspaper.

Arellano didn't hesitate when asked what she misses most about the United States.

"What I miss is a job," she said. "That's why we immigrants move to the United States, to work."

Division Street

Back in Chicago, the room Arellano and Saul shared while holed up in the church remains largely untouched, with Saul's toys and books and Arellano's press clippings still scattered about.

But their absence has left a palpable void for the people who sheltered them and became surrogate family.

Last Christmas Eve, the teenage son of Beti Guevara, a pastor at the church, had dressed up as Santa Claus to surprise Saul.

This year, Saul and his extended family celebrated his first Christmas in Mexico with a bonfire party that lasted well into the night.

Arellano sent Guevara a text message at 3:45 in the morning to tell her about it.

"It was a sad Christmas. Saulito, he belonged to all of us," Guevara said. "He'd been with us since he was 2."

Arellano's deportation also left a hole in the immigration reform movement, Guevara said.

At the national level, reform has stalled, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have cracked down harder on illegal immigrants and those who employ them.

Locally, Guevara said, Arellano's plight galvanized, but then disheartened, immigration activists.

"After it happened, a lot of people lost faith that we will have some type of immigration reform," said Guevara, whose parents emigrated from Puerto Rico.

Guevara said Arellano's example prompted many people to seek sanctuary in local churches.

Unlike Arellano, they prefer to remain in the shadows.

"We're not the only sanctuary in Chicago, but they're not saying anything," Guevara said. "They're scared.

"Elvira wasn't scared."