By Alice Woodward, Revolution #58, 8/27/06
This past week, on Tuesday, Aug. 15, Mexican-born immigrant Elvira
Arellano was ordered to report to the Department of Homeland Security
in Chicago and turn herself in for deportation.
Elvira publicly refused the order. Her church, Adalberto United
Methodist Church in the Humboldt Park district of Chicago, opened its
doors as a sanctuary. The reverend has called on others across the
country to do the same for the masses of immigrants threatened and
under attack.
At this moment Elvira remains in the
church with her seven-year-old-son Saul. Hundreds of others have come
to support her and stand with the struggle she represents. By Friday an
anonymous representative from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
said that they would not enter the church to detain her, stating she is
“no more priority than any of the other 500,000 fugitives nationally”
and assuring all that they will be apprehending her “at an appropriate
time and place.”
Support from California to South Carolina
Tuesday
night I saw Elvira’s face in a clip on the television, holding her son
in her arms. The following afternoon I joined many others at Adalberto
United Methodist Church who recognized that this one person’s actions
were incredibly significant.
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Supporters of Arellano stand in front of Adalberto United Methodist Church, Aug. 16th, 2006. (Revolution photo) |
Since Elvira entered
the church in the heart of Chicago’s Puerto Rican neighborhood, the
street has come alive with a spirit of defiant resistance. Immigrant
families came with their children. Church patrons stayed for hours in
support. Students arrived on their own or as part of organizations.
Some people settled in to stay for hours, while others were passers-by
drawn by the vibrant crowd and a full block of white satellite news
vans. A young reporter from the Spanish media rushed from the church to
the sidewalks to talk with others and back to her van to view footage.
You could see in her face that the infectious inspiration of this story
had gotten to her.
People had a sense they were part of
something historic which was not just for their own nationality or
group. There was a real desire to see this grow and a sense of that
possibility.
This stand, and what it represents in the
struggle for the rights of millions of immigrants, has resonated
throughout the country. Media coverage has extended nationally and
internationally as well. Spanish language press is closely following
the story. Word spread at a lightening pace among immigrant rights
organizers nationally. Associated Press reported that “activists from
California to South Carolina” were behind her. In Phoenix, Martín
Manteca, for the group Mi Familia Vota (My Family Votes) said that
groups of activists have already organized vigils in support of Elvira
Arellano. Delores Huerta, a well-known union leader among farmworkers,
came to the church to show her support.
The March 10th
Movement, a coalition of approximately 100 organizations that helped
coordinate the recent mega-marches in Chicago in support of immigration
reform, issued a statement saying: “We must not allow Elvira Arellano,
the undocumented immigrant and leader of a movement in support of all
immigrants, to be deported.”
Just Stand Against an Unjust Law
In
the midst of an enthusiastic crowd on the sidewalk, a representative
for Elvira declared on a bullhorn “She has sparked something that I
think is necessary for this whole movement. I think all the churches
need to become sanctuaries. We cannot stand aside with our arms closed
while they divide mother from son, father from children and wife from
husband.” Many are comparing Arellano’s actions to Rosa Park’s historic
stand. People saw this could be something like the Underground
Railroad, where churches and supporters of immigrants open their doors.
ICE
has said only a request from a Senator can stop the deportation
order-and both Illinois Senators, Dick Durbin and Barack Obama, have
expressed that there is nothing they will do. Obama stated, “What I
can’t do is to take one person out of the hundreds of thousands who are
in exactly the same situation and carve them out for special treatment.
That just wouldn’t be fair. That’s not how we do business here in the
United States.”
How the U.S. “Does Business”
In
2002 Elvira had been working at O”Hare airport as a cleaning woman when
she was arrested for the first time. Her arrest was part of “Operation
Chicago Land Skies” which rounded up 53 immigrant employees at the
airport. The fate of many of the others detained is still unknown. This
was part of round-ups taking place nationally after 9/11 in the name of
the “War on Terror.” There were never any official claims that
connected these people to terrorists.
Arellano plead
guilty to working under a false Social Security number and was given
probation. She’s been threatened with deportation four times since
then, and received one year stays each time, in part because her
seven-year-old son is a U.S. citizen with ADHD and other health
problems. Since then Arellano has been an activist for immigrant
rights, helping to found and becoming president of La Familia Latina
Unida (United Latino Family). Thousands face the threat of their
families being ripped apart. This horrific reality is reminiscent of
slave days when little children were literally ripped from their
mother’s hands and sold.
In the U.S. today millions of
immigrants are forced to live in the shadows, and treated as
second-class citizens. Immigrants are rounded up and deported. They’re
attacked for speaking Spanish at work. They cannot get health care or
driver’s licenses. They are imprisoned indefinitely and murdered at the
border, and those who are able to stake out an existence here are
persecuted from day to day.
Outside Adalberto church
were many for whom Elvira was their voice. A woman described the ways
in which, due to a lack of a driver’s license, she is treated as a
second-class citizen every day. She cannot even get a video store
membership. “It’s a shame to me, it makes me cry. When I go to the
store one day, my kids ask me, “mommy, can you get me a movie?” And I
say ; “no,” “Why?” “Because I can’t.” How can you explain that to a
child. She’s (Elvira) tired of that, and that’s why she’s doing this.
And that’s why we are here with her, cause we’re tired already.”
Another
Latino youth talked about his law suit against the auto parts company
he worked for that threatened to fire him, and continues to harass him,
for speaking Spanish to help serve Spanish-speaking customers. He said
that when Nigerians come in for auto parts, the managers tell them, “We
have no auto parts.”
The plans for immigrants under the
Bush regime include the National Guard at the border, detention centers
across the country, massive deportations and biometric identification
cards. Immigrants already face severe repression, day to day
discrimination, and death and rape at the border. Already this kind of
repression is increasing and on a whole other scale. The New York Times
reported that an official from the League of United Latin American
Citizens attested, “I have never seen these type of deportations in my
life.” The attacks on immigrants must be opposed.
Summer Winds and Autumn Storms
When
I think of the world in which this story has come forward, the context
in which someone has dared to step out, I feel breathless with
anticipation, and urgency. This comes in the wake of a huge upsurge of
millions of immigrants throughout the country, as part of a growing
movement and at a time when there is tremendous upheaval in Mexico and
a mass outpouring in response to fraudulent elections.
This
is happening in the context of the whole direction the Bush Regime is
taking society. From the war in Iraq and U.S./Israeli attacks on
Lebanon, to the handling of hurricane Katrina, government spying, and
attacks on gay marriage. People have been outraged-and they have been
paralyzed, with no way to act.
The stand Elvira Arellano
is taking has come at a time when what the people here and around the
world do to oppose the outrages of the Bush Regime really matters. It
shows great potential for the continuation and intensification of the
immigrant rights movement in the U.S., for its just demands to be met.
It represents a call and a challenge to those who increasingly see the
injustices brought upon people being forced to “live in the shadows”
and also to those who are sickened by the many outrages going on today.
When I think of what I’ve learned and seen and heard, it
amounts to a palpable potential of the real basis for thousands of
people to come together and truly build the movement to drive out the
Bush Regime. For the “vast reservoir” of millions, as World Can’t Wait‘s
recent statement describes, to come together on October 5th. If
thousands from the reservoir that was represented in that crowd of
people outside Aldaberto church were to act on that day against the
direction of things”thousands, moving millions. Imagine what kind of
impact that could that have.