Church continues to offer sanctuary for mother, son
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A UMNS photo by Linda S. Rhodes Bishops Minerva Carcaņo and Hee-Soo Jung pray with Elvira Arellano (right) and her son, Saul, 7.
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United
Methodist Bishops Minerva Carcaņo, Phoenix Area, and Hee-Soo Jung,
Chicago Area, pray with Elvira Arellano (right) and her 7-year-old son,
Saul, in the offices of Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago.
Arellano, a lay leader, has taken refuge in the church to avoid
deportation by federal officials. A UMNS photo by Linda S. Rhodes. Photo
#06931. Accompanies UMNS story #501. 8/23/06 |
Aug. 23, 2006
By Linda S. Rhodes
CHICAGO (UMNS) — Since mid-August, Elvira Arellano and her 7-year-old
son, Saul, have found sanctuary in Adalberto United Methodist Church.
Arellano, lay leader of the church, has asked for sanctuary against
the threat of being deported from the United States. Members of the
small Hispanic congregation, located in a storefront at 2716 W. Division
St. in the Humboldt Park neighborhood, have rallied around Arellano,
granting her sanctuary and allowing her to live in the church while she
attempts to stay in this country with her son, who is a U.S. citizen.
“She asked us for sanctuary,” said the Rev. Walter Coleman,
Adalberto’s pastor. “She’s a member of our church. We love her. We
prayed about it, and we believe God asked us to provide a space where
the voice of the marginalized can be heard. We pray that God will
continue to protect her.”
Bishop Minerva Carcaņo will be interviewed Aug. 23 by the Fox News
Channel on the church’s stand on immigration and Arellano. Portions of
the interview will air on “Special Report with Brit Hume” at 6 p.m.
Eastern time. Carcaņo was interviewed Aug. 16 on CNN’s “Lou Dobbs
Tonight.”
During that interview Carcaņo, bishop of the denomination’s Phoenix
area, spoke in support of Arellano. “The United Methodist Church stands
with families like Miss Arellano. It is an issue of justice that she be
allowed to stay with her young son.”
Becoming an activist
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A UMNS photo by Linda S. Rhodes The Rev. Walter Coleman (right) is interviewed by news reporters in front of Adalberto United Methodist Church.
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The
Rev. Walter Coleman (right), pastor of Adalberto United Methodist
Church, is interviewed by news reporters outside the church's storefront
entrance, in the Humboldt Park neighborhood of Chicago. Lay leader
Elvira Arellano has taken refuge in the church to avoid deportation by
federal officials. A UMNS photo by Linda S. Rhodes. Photo #06932.
Accompanies UMNS story #501. 8/23/06
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Arellano, a 31-year-old single mother, came to the United States from
Mexico in 1997 without documents. When she first tried to enter the
country, she was turned back. Three days later, she walked across the
border.
She lived in the state of Washington, where she met Saul’s father.
They split up, and in 2000, Arellano brought her son to Chicago. She got
a job at O’Hare International Airport cleaning airplanes.
In December 2002, she was caught in a federal raid on O’Hare looking
for undocumented immigrants. She was arrested and put in deportation
proceedings. That’s when she joined Adalberto United Methodist Church.
Her son had been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and other
health problems, so she asked U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and U.S. Rep. Luis
Gutierrez, both Democrats from Illinois, for help. They managed to
obtain approval of a private relief bill on her behalf that gave her an
extension to remain in the United States.
She became active in the immigrant rights movement and established La
Familia Latina Unida, an outreach of Adalberto that helps families
separated or on the verge of being separated by existing U.S.
immigration laws. Earlier this year, she went on a hunger strike to
demand an immediate moratorium on raids and deportations.
She was ordered to report to the U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement office in Chicago at 9 a.m. Aug. 15. Instead, she went to
church.
“I believe that this order is selective, vindictive, retaliatory and
inhumane,” Arellano said. “One year ago, I was granted a stay while
private bills in my behalf were pending in Congress. Nothing has changed
since that stay was granted. Homeland Security has the legal power and,
I believe, the obligation to extend this stay of deportation.”
She said she told her attorney to notify Deborah Achim, ICE Chicago Field Office director, of her decision and her location.
“Homeland Security knows where I am,” she said.
“I have done this because I do not wish my friends and community to
be subjected to raids and harassment,” Arellano said. “Nor do I want
Homeland Security to use me as an excuse to arrest and deport others
like me and to try to destroy their families and the lives of their
children.”
‘High spirits’
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A UMNS photo by Linda S. Rhodes Elvira Arellano and son, Saul, 7, sit in the sanctuary of Adalberto United Methodist Church.
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Elvira
Arellano and son, Saul, 7, sit in the sanctuary of Adalberto United
Methodist Church, located in the Humboldt Park neighborhood of Chicago.
She has taken refuge in the church to avoid being deported. Members of
the small Hispanic congregation are supporting Arellano, granting her
sanctuary and allowing her to live in the church while she attempts to
stay in this country with her son, who is a U.S. citizen. A UMNS photo
by Linda S. Rhodes. Photo #06933. Accompanies UMNS story #501. 8/23/06
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Two days after taking refuge in the church, Arellano sounded upbeat.
“I am in very high spirits because I am in the house of the Lord,”
she said. “The church that from the beginning has opened their doors for
me has never closed those doors.”
In a report in the Chicago Sun-Times, an immigration official
who spoke on the condition of anonymity said there were no plans to
enter the church and arrest her. The official said Arellano’s case
carries “no more priority than any of the other 500,000 fugitives
nationally.” She will be apprehended “at an appropriate time and place,”
the official said.
Arellano said that if federal officials come to get her, “they won’t
be dealing with me. They will be dealing with the wrath of God. This is
the house of God.”
“We are all willing to help her,” said Beti Guevara, Adalberto
assistant pastor. “The church has backed her up. We are going to do what
Scripture tells us to do — to be with her and to comfort her because
she is a child of God.”
Guevara said the congregation is “happy that our leaders are also supporting her.”
Bishop Hee-Soo Jung and the Rev. James Preston, Chicago Northwestern
District superintendent, have visited Arellano to offer prayers and
support. On Aug. 16, Bishop Carcaņo visited the church to pray with
Elvira and her son.
Bishop Jung released a statement supporting Arellano’s action, saying
she was “invoking the centuries-old Christian tradition of sanctuary”
and “drawing upon the tradition of civil disobedience.”
“While as Christians we may disagree over the best way to fix the
nation’s broken immigration system, we affirm that the Bible directs us
to care for the foreigners in our midst (Exodus 23:9) and reminds us
that we too are sojourners (Leviticus 25:23),” Jung said.
He also noted that the United Methodist Social Principles state that
“governments and laws should be the servants of God and of human beings”
and that the church recognizes “the right of individuals to dissent
when acting under the constraint of conscience and after having
exhausted all legal recourse, to resist or disobey laws that they deem
to be unjust or that are discriminately enforced.”
The church will “uphold our commitment to families and urge the
reunification of families now separated and those under threat of
separation by our current broken immigration laws,” Jung said.
Prayer services
Congressman Gutierrez visited Arellano and brought her copies of
letters he had written on her behalf to President George Bush and John
Hostettler, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Border
Security and Claims. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley sent a copy of a letter
he wrote to ICE’s Achim asking for an extension of Arellano’s stay of
deportation.
The congregation has been holding prayer services “day and night,”
Guevara said. Referring to Psalm 23, she added: “We tell Elvira she’s
walking through the valley. She’s not standing in it.”
Church offices have been turned into a bedroom where Arellano and her
son can sleep. Members of the congregation are always in the church,
watching over the mother and her child.
Church members believe Arellano has been singled out for deportation because of her advocacy for reforming immigration laws.
“We feel she’s being punished because of her activism,” Guevara said.
“We salute Elvira’s courage,” Pastor Coleman said. “She could have
chosen to just disappear and become one of the invisible 12 million
(undocumented immigrants) in this country. Instead she is standing up
for her people and her son. She is doing this so her son will know he is
a child of God, a dignified person.”
“I am not a terrorist,” Arellano said. “I am not a criminal. I am not
a fugitive. I am a mom. I love my son. My son is a U.S. citizen. My son
says, ‘Mom, please stay here with me.’ So, I will stay here with my
son.”
*Rhodes is director of communications, Northern Illinois Conference of the United Methodist Church.
News media contact: Kathy L. Gilbert, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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