Elvira Arellano

Elvira Arellano is an ILLEGAL immigrant.

Her supporters consider her to be a heroine, the embodiment of the ILLEGAL immigration movement. They believe that the cold-hearted U.S. government is harassing her and infringing on her rights. She's an innocent victim.

She just wants to be with her 8-year-old American born son.

Arellano's supporters don't care about her disregard for the law. This is about evil President Bush scheming to separate her from her little boy. It's about an impotent Congress.

LOS ANGELES -- Federal authorities Sunday arrested Elvira Arellano on a downtown city street, ending a yearlong standoff that intensified recently after the illegal Mexican immigrant began what was to be a nationwide campaign to push for new immigration reforms.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested Arellano, 32, shortly after 2 p.m. Los Angeles time (just after 4 p.m. Chicago time,) as she and her supporters were leaving a downtown church where she sought sanctuary after slipping unnoticed out of the church on Chicago's Northwest Side where she had avoided deportation since August 2006.

As Arellano, her 8-year-old son Saul and others headed in a sport-utility vehicle along Main Street toward another leg of their trip in Northern California, several unmarked cars swarmed the vehicle, ordering her to get out as they grabbed the driver and handcuffed him, said Chicago activist Emma Lozano, who was with Arellano.

Before surrendering, Arellano asked for time alone to console her crying son, telling him: "Calm down. Don't have any fear. They can't hurt me," Lozano said. The entire incident lasted about two minutes, she said. The driver was released.

Arellano was taken in handcuffs to a nearby federal detention center, from which she was to be routed to Tijuana, according to Mexican officials. Lozano and others vowed they would fight to keep her from being deported.

..."We have several lawyers already working on it," Lozano said, her eyes red as a group of Arellano supporters sat in stunned silence inside the Our Lady Queen of Angels Catholic Church at "La Placita," the historic center of Mexican Los Angeles. The Catholic church is among about a dozen in several states that have served as sanctuaries for illegal immigrants who, like Arellano, have already been ordered out of the country.

Federal authorities have begun the deportation process for Arellano, who was originally ordered to leave the country in 1997, according to a statement from Immigration and Customs Enforcement put out after the arrest.

...Arellano spent most of her day Sunday urging audiences of several hundred parishioners inside four separate churches to lobby House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi and other congressional members from California to take up immigration reform immediately after returning from summer recess. Between stops, she donned a pair of sunglasses and slipped into the back of her group's electric blue sport-utility vehicle with her son.

"It's important that we are unified so that we can bring out the message that we're all struggling together," Arellano said at the Angelica Lutheran Church, inside Los Angeles' Pico-Union neighborhood, a port of entry for Central American immigrants. "The hate you are seeing build around the country has no boundaries."

Arellano talks about hate.

Huh?

Is it hateful to expect U.S. law and the boundaries of the U.S. to be respected by American citizens and non-citizens in the country?

She talks about the struggle.

Struggle to do what? Avoid U.S. authorities? Change the laws to suit her wants?

The fact is this activist is deflecting attention from the reality of her situation.

U.S. immigration laws are not the only ones that she has broken.

From the Associated Press:

Arellano came to Washington state illegally in 1997. She was deported to Mexico shortly after, 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 last August.

She ILLEGALLY entered the country. She was deported. She ILLEGALLY entered the country again, and got a job using a false Social Security number. She was arrested again.

Apparently, Arellano believes that she's above the law. She believes it's OK for her to lie. Screw the laws of the country if they get in her way.

She wants to be here and she doesn't feel the need to do it LEGALLY. Why bother becoming a U.S. citizen and actually getting a Social Security number legitimately?

It's so much easier to act like a victim of an inhumane system rather than to behave responsibly.

"From the time I took sanctuary the possibility has existed that they arrest me in the place and time they want," [Arellano] said in Spanish. "I only have two choices. I either go to my country, Mexico, or stay and keep fighting. I decided to stay and fight."

Is staying and fighting supposed to be the brave and noble thing to do?

It's neither. She didn't have to break U.S. laws repeatedly to be an activist for LEGAL immigration reform.

She chose to disregard the rule of law again and again.

Here's more.

Congress failed to pass immigration reform legislation in its last session. Arellano and activists want lawmakers to place a moratorium on deportations and hammer out reforms that would allow undocumented immigrants to remain in the country, at least temporarily.

''We cannot wait for another election,'' she said. ''We can't wait, sitting with our arms crossed, while our families are being separated.''

A few things--

Arellano isn't a U.S. citizen.

She has no right to vote in our elections.

If she wants to whine about the president, she should be whining about the president of Mexico. Why doesn't she use her energy to get her government to improve living conditions in her own country?

The United States is NOT her country. It could be, but she doesn't want to do what's necessary to make it so. She doesn't think the law should apply to her.

She's not a LEGAL immigrant. She's a law-breaker. That's her choice.

The U.S. government isn't in the business of separating families. Arellano chose to follow an ILLEGAL path. It's her own fault.

Furthermore, she doesn't have to be separated from her son. She could take him to Mexico. No one is ripping them apart. They can be together. There's no forced separation here.

What sort of example is she setting for her son?

He's learning that breaking the law is OK.

I have no doubt that Arellano loves her son, but I think she's using him as a pawn; trotting him out before the cameras, the dramatic goodbye.

It's so staged. The little boy without his mother is meant to tug at our hearts. Arellano is exploiting him to garner sympathy. In my opinion, that move backfires.

Think of all the children without a parent due to illness and accidental death. That's truly heartwrenching.

Arellano is choosing to be separated from her son.

She has no one to blame but herself.