CHICAGO (AP) – A delegation of Mexican congressmen pledged their continued support Friday for an undocumented Chicago mother who says she is defying a U.S. deportation order because wants to remain here with her son, who is a U.S. citizen.
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(Photo: AP / M. Spencer Green)Jose Jacques, a congressman with Mexico's Democratic Revolution Party, is joined by other politicians from Mexico, as he speaks at a news conference at a church in Chicago, Friday, Feb. 9, 2007, where they came to pledge their continued support for Elvira Arellano, fourth from left at podium, in her plight defying a U.S. deportation order. Arellano has taken refuge at the church since mid-August 2006.
The politicians visited immigration activist Elvira Arellano at the Adalberto United Methodist Church, where she and her now 8-year-old son have taken refuge since mid-August. They told Arellano her plight has galvanized Mexico's multiparty Congress behind a single issue: the reunification of families.
"This fight of yours – this fight for the Latina family – is a fight that has united us," Edmundo Ramirez, a congressman with Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, said in Spanish.
The Mexican officials traveled to Chicago after visiting Washington D.C. on Thursday and presenting members of the U.S. House of Representatives' Hispanic Caucus with a resolution passed by the Mexican Congress in November.
The resolution expresses support for Arellano and asks the U.S. Congress to suspend her deportation order. The document, which also calls for a moratorium on massive deportations, was drafted after Arrelano's son, Saul, visited Mexico's 500-member Chamber of Deputies to plead for help in lobbying Washington to stop his mother's deportation.
Jose Jacques, a congressman with Mexico's Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, said the U.S. needs to enact sensible immigration laws that allow families to stay together.
"We don't want to be hidden from the streets in the darkness of our homes," he said. "... It is a fight for families."
The Mexican congressman also were joined by Dolores Huerta, a longtime activist who helped found the United Farm Workers Union along with Cesar Chavez. She asked that immigrant rights marches being planned around the country for April 29 be dedicated to Arellano and her son, Saul.
Arellano illegally crossed into the U.S. in 1997. She was arrested and sent back to Mexico but returned to the U.S. within several days and moved to Chicago three years later. In 2002, Arellano was arrested again and convicted of working as a cleaning woman at O'Hare International Airport under a false Social Security number.
Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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