Remember the chatty church squatter who hid among Chicago pews to escape La Migra? After much noisy drama, convicted felon Elvira Arelleno was finally repatriated to her nation of actual citizenship in 2007. But that’s not the last chapter of the story — far from it.

In fact, Elvira should be an inspiration to all illegal aliens that deportation is not the end of opportunity for a better life, but is merely a change in circumstance. Look how well Elvira is doing: she has parlayed her endless complaints about American immigration laws (always a favorite topic in victimhood-obsessed Mexico) into a run for the national legislature. She has name recognition, issues and copious press coverage — heck, she is practically elected. [Elvira Arellano Runs for Mexican Congress, New America Media, May , 2009]

Among the better known candidates running for Congress is Elvira Arellano, the deported activist from the United States who came to symbolize the face of the new immigrant movement. Taking refuge in a Chicago church in August 2006, Arellano defied a deportation order and US immigration authorities for one year in an unsuccessful attempt to remain with her young son. In August 2007, she was arrested and sent back to Mexico after appearing at an immigrant rights rally in Los Angeles.

Almost two years later, Arellano is on the campaign trail in Tijuana, Baja California, where she is the candidate for Congressional District #4 on the ticket of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).

Keeping true to her word to keep the migrant issue alive in the public eye, the energetic activist is stressing immigrant rights issues in Mexico’s 2009 political campaign. In comments last weekend, Arellano said she is especially concerned about the fate of women migrants who pass through Mexico on their way to the US, a journey that is often fraught with sexual assaults and other abuses.

“I am going to seek laws in Congress that protect women, and also that protect undocumented Central Americans who are treated like criminals in Mexico,” Arellano said.

You go, Elvira! Mexican women need better protection from piggyman  Mexican males: how about more women-only buses that are free of groping. There’s a lot that needs fixing in Mexico, and Elvira’s innate intransigence could be an asset.

How wonderful for Elvira that her beloved homeland has offered her so much hope. The Mexican Dream is alive and well, as shown by Elvira Arellano.

For Mexicans stuck on open-borders, no topic is out of bounds for use in their ceaseless, shameless drumbeat of victimhood. So a vile depiction of Jesus as a “migrant” for political purposes is just another day in Mexico City during Easter week.

For the occasion, a gaggle of amnesty-obsessed Mexicans concocted a tacky bit of street theater, crudely based on the Passion of Christ. A Mexican playing Jesus carried a cross and led a throng past the United States Embassy on the way to Calvary.

Yep, the suffering of Jesus for the sins of the world was deemed a dandy plot device to depict Mexicans as Christ-like innocents at the hands of cruel Americans. Scourging Roman centurions were transposed into ICE agents to underline the political point.
[Jesus as a migrant in Mexico City pro-immigration street theater, Los Angeles Times La Plaza Blog, April 6, 2009]

Organized by pro-immigration activists, the street performance depicted Jesus as a Mexican migrant, and as the actor walked around dragging his cross, others wearing T-shirts emblazoned with ICE (U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and INM (Instituto Nacional de Migracion, Mexico’s national migration agency) flogged him from behind shouting, “Walk, wretch, walk!”

One of the organizers was Elvira Arellano, who shot into the spotlight in both the United States and Mexico in 2006 after she took refuge in a Chicago church to avoid being deported back to Mexico.

Elvira! The convicted felon was finally deported back to Mexico after much drama, but still manages to complain long-distance about American immigration enforcement. How can we miss her when she won’t go away?

For the Christmas version of Mexicans with similarly inflated views of themselves (often comparing their lawbreaking to the struggles of “migrants” Mary and Joseph), see Mexicans’ Merry Posadas from last December.

Marginally increased border enforcement has given rise to a new sub-category of the sob story genre — Mexican citizens returned to their own country and required to live there. Elvira Arellano (a convicted felon) is the queen of this category, since she was repatriated to Mexico last year and the squawking hasn’t stopped since.

Carlos Martinez was in a state of total panic after being deported from the United States to the Mexican border city of Matamoros — he had no money, nowhere to go, and, worst of all, he didn’t speak Spanish. The 30-year-old New Yorker had left Mexico as a baby; when the Department of Homeland Security sent him south last May after he had served a prison term, he landed in a foreign land.

“I was crying when I went over the border. It was just a big joke to the U.S. immigration officials to have this Mexican who doesn’t speak Spanish. But I was terrified,” Martinez said.
[Mexico Tries to Help Deportees, Time Magazine, Feb 7, 2008]

Funny how Raza types demand that we American citizens speak Spanish; but Mexicans, not as much.

The medieval right of sanctuary was supposed to give miscreants a chance to get right with God before they were executed, and only last 40 days at most, anyhow. No such right exists in American law. But someone else is trying it:

Immigrant takes refuge in church :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Metro & Tri-State
Immigrant seeks sanctuary in same church as Elvira Arellano

January 28, 2008
BY KARA SPAK Staff reporter/kspak@suntimes.com

Saying she hoped the fear of God would keep federal agents away, undocumented immigrant Flor Crisostomo said Monday she plans to stay in a Humboldt Park church as long as necessary to fight for immigration reform.

“In this moment, I am not leaving,” a tearful Crisostomo cried out in Spanish. She later said through an English translator that while she understands she may be imprisoned for her actions, she will return one day to her children with her dignity.

Crisostomo, 28, left her three children ages 14, 11 and 9 in the care of her mother in Guerrero, Mexico seven years ago to work illegally in the United States. Arrested in 2006 during an immigration raid at a pallet factory where she earned $300 a week, she was scheduled to turn herself in for deportation today .[More]

Maybe we need to get atheists like Christopher Hitchens  and the Americans United For Separation Of Church And State to harass the Church in question, and the DHS as well. Churches have no more right to harbor illegals than an employer does.The DHS made a mistake when they waited for Elvira to come out before they arrested her.

Chicago anarchist Emma Lozano, a Communist Party recruiter in that city in the 1970s and godmother to the son of deported Elvira “Church Lady” Arellano, is among those lefty luminaries comprising the Illinois for Hillary Hispanic Leadership Council.

“I am thrilled to have the support of this group of prominent Hispanic leaders from the state of Illinois,” said Senator (Hillary) Clinton. “Too many Hispanic families feel that they are invisible to this president, but when I am president, no American will be invisible.” (Except, perhaps, black Americans, and the others who make up our own working poor).

Lozano is the wife of pseudo-cleric Walter “Slim” Coleman, whose spiffy storefront Methodist church was used by Arellano for a year while she flipped off federal immigration agents and sniveled to anyone carrying a TV camera or reporter’s notebook.

You can see a brief bio of Lozano here. She’s the fifth “fellow” from the top.

I have an interview with Silvio Canto, Jr., you can listen to it here. Topics include Christmas in Mexico, the Tabasco flood, the Mexican economy,  emigration, and Elvira Arellano.

Some church in Simi Valley, California is “hiding” an illegal immigrant and her child from immigration authorities who want to deport her–no, I’m not talking about my favorite fugitive Elvira Arellano but yet another (of what I assume must be thousands) mouthy lawbreaker!

Following a recent protest which required (expensive) additional law enforcement support, the mayor of Simi Valley, Paul Miller, decided to charge the responsible party for all costs incurred. Yeah, the church!! The United Church of Christ is currently home for “Liliana” as part of the church’s “New Sanctuary Movement.”

The “New Sanctuary Movement.” is an official program/policy for all United Church of Christ facilities–and they just got a $40,000 bill from the city! I think it’s brilliant, just brilliant!

Mayor Miller made his intentions very clear and very simple: “This city is not going to be known as sanctuary city.”

For more info click here.

To tell Mayor Miller how awesome he is or to encourage the rest of his City Council to support his position, click here.

Hmm…if you want to tell the church to KNOCK IT OFF this is their email.

Now that Elvira Arellano is back in Mexico and reunified with her son, the question is moot, but she spent a year in the Adalberto United Methodist Church, with the ICE tacitly respecting her right to sanctuary, and they only arrested her when she left.Sanctuary is a medieval concept, with no place in American law, which is governed by the First Amendment, and can’t give special privileges for a fugitive who happens to have chosen a church to hide in.

Back in medieval times there was such a right, but it was strictly limited. This is a scene from The Sanctuary Sparrow, a novel by Ellis Peters, in which a young man accused of attempted robbery is forced to seek sanctuary in a church, in the year 1140:

‘I well understand,’ said the abbot, ‘that on such a charge you must enquire, and may justice be done. But I think you also know well the sacredness of sanctuary. It is not shelter against sin, it is the provision of a time of calm, when the guilty may examine his soul, and the innocent confide in his salvation. But it may not be violated. It has a period, but until that time is spent it is holy. For forty days the man you seek on this charge is ours—no, he belongs to God!—and he may not be haled forth, nor persuaded forth, nor any way removed against his will from these premises. He is ours to feed, to care for and to shelter, for those forty days.’

‘That I grant,’ said the sergeant. ‘But there are conditions. He came of his own will within, he may enjoy only the allowance of food those within here enjoy.’ Less than he did, by his lusty bulk, but surely more than Liliwin had ever enjoyed as his regular provision. ‘And when the respite is over, he may not again be supplied with food, but must come forth and submit himself to trial.’

He was as iron-sure of his case here as was Radulfus in the days of grace, he voiced his mandate coldly. There would be no extension of the time allowed, after that they would make sure he starved until he came forth. It was fair. Forty days is consideration enough.

This is fictional, but Ellis Peters had a pretty good grasp of medieval law. Here’s the Catholic Encyclopedia’s article on sanctuary

A fugitive convicted of felony and taking the benefit of sanctuary was afforded protection from thirty to forty days, after which, subject to certain severe conditions, he had to “abjure the realm”, that is leave the kingdom within a specified time and take an oath not to return without the king’s leave.

That’s a much different view of sanctuary than Elvira’s–after forty days you’re obliged to leave the country and not come back without permission. I’d settle for that.

It’s official. Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa has revealed that she has asked the U.S. government to let Elvira Arellano back into the country.

What’s not clear though, is that she will be designated “peace and justice” ambassador, as Elvira has requested.

According to diplomatic protocol, the credentials of an ambassador must be approved by the receiving country. Any self-respecting U.S. government would reject those of Elvira. (However, we are talking about the Bush administration).
Anyway, Elvira is getting a little displeased with the Mexican government:

“Arellano said she would not back down from her request and was angered that Mexico was seeking a U.S. visa, adding that the Mexican government should not have to ask permission to send her north of the border.” Mexico Trying To Help Arellano Return To U.S.CBS2Chicago.com, September 4, 2007

Well, that’s the attitude that got Elvira into trouble before. She never thought she needed a visa to get into the United States.
Elvira declares adamantly ,

“I’m not asking for any visa. I want a diplomatic post as ambassador of peace and justice, and I won’t accept anything less.”

There’s a real silver lining here. The more aggressive and obnoxious Elvira and her supporters are, the more it wakes up ordinary Americans and helps the restrictionist cause!

In my article about the Elvira Arellano Melodrama, I reported that the recently-deported Elvira met with the president of Mexico, Felipe Calderon.

According to initial reports, Elvira asked Calderon to help arrange her visa to the U.S. Calderon replied that he would study her case, but the issuance of a visa was up to American authorities, not the Mexican government. So Elvira exited Los Pinos (the Mexican White House), and made no statement to the media.

Later, however, Elvira held her own press conference elsewhere, and put a different spin on things. Elvira said that she’d requested Calderon designate her “Ambassador of Immigrants” in the U.S.:

“I asked him for a diplomatic visa to return to the United States as an ambassador of peace, justice and hope for many people.”

Did Elvira really request that? Initial reports didn’t say that she did, and the statement on the President of Mexico’s website said she requested Mexican government help in obtaining a U.S. visa from the U.S.

Either Elvira is lying about what she said to the president of Mexico, the Mexican government didn’t want to reveal it, or the initial reports simply didn’t include it.

In any case, I get the impression the Calderon administration is not too keen on getting mixed up with Elvira.

A positive result of the Elvira Spectacle is that, rather than endearing herself to Americans, her defiance, shamelessness, and willingness to utilize her son as a propaganda tool is not exactly winning over the American public. Like the protesting Mexican flag-wavers, I think it’s helping our side!

Here’s a defiant shot of Elvira, shaking her fist at us.

Keep it up Elvira, you’re showing more Americans that illegal immigration is a real problem that needs fixing.

I guess in an unintended and ironic way, she really is an “ambassador!”