You would think, given the headline, that illegal immigrant was arrested for protesting. In fact, she’s being arrested, extremely late, for being an illegal alien. In fact, it’s difficult to see any mention anywhere in the story of the fact that she’s committing a crime just by being in the United States.

Immigration activist Arellano arrested

By Antonio Olivo [Send him mail] | Chicago Tribune
5:52 PM CDT, August 19, 2007

LOS ANGELES—An immigration activist who sought refuge inside a Chicago church for a year was arrested in Los Angeles this afternoon after taking her campaign on the road.

Elvira Arellano was arrested about 4:15 p.m. Chicago time by law-enforcement officials after leaving Our Lady Queen of Angels Church in downtown Los Angeles, said Emma Lozano, an adviser who was there during the arrest.

After talking to news media inside the church, Arellano and her supporters got into their van to head north to San Jose, where she was scheduled to speak at another church, Lozano said. Moments after they entered the van, an unmarked vehicle stopped them.

Here’s the Los Angeles Times today, presenting a news story that involves illegal immigration. It starts out well enough, then goes off the tracks…

Violent crime along the U.S.-Mexico border, which has long plagued the scrubby, often desolate stretch, is increasingly spilling northward into the cities of the American Southwest.

In Phoenix, deputies are working the unsolved case of 13 border crossers who were kidnapped and executed in the desert. In Dallas, nearly two dozen high school students have died in the last two years from overdoses of a $2-a-hit Mexican fad drug called “cheese heroin.”

The crime surge, most acute in Texas and Arizona, is fueled by a gritty drug war in Mexico that includes hostages being held in stash houses, daylight gun battles claiming innocent lives, and teenage hit men for the Mexican cartels. Shipments of narcotics and vans carrying illegal workers on U.S. highways are being hijacked by rival cartels fighting over the lucrative smuggling routes. Fires are being set in national forests to divert police.
[Border violence pushes north, Los Angeles Times 8/19/07]

What? The crime spreading north from Mexico is a result of continued open borders and the cartels working to increase their market share. The spillover from the war among the cartels is a just a part of worsening violence from foreigners in the Southwest. Many of the examples cited in the article are just more of the same Mexican crime tsunami flowing into America because of Bush’s refusal to enforce the borders as required by the Constitution.

As reported in here, Mexicans at home are fighting over which gang of thugs will contol the multi-billion-dollar drug trade in certain regions, particularly the future NAFTA highway following Route 35. (“Drug traffickers kill for I-35.” )

As I’ve written before, you don’t have to believe Mexico is a crime-friendly culture to understand that upwardly mobile professional criminals want to operate where they can maximize profits. The low-rent boonies of Mexico look pretty unappealing compared to the bright lights and big money of the United States: drug smugglers have an American Dream of success too.

But such harch realities of diversity must be smoothed over by la Times with warm and cuddly reminders of how lucky we are to be invaded by Mexico. Remarkably, the LA Times can’t miss an opportunity to celebrate diversity and denigrate sovereignty even while the paper describes worsening crime.

Nestor Rodriguez, a University of Houston sociologist, said people on both sides of the Rio Grande viewed themselves as one community.

“People say, ‘The river doesn’t divide us; it unites us,’ ” he said. “When you’re at ground zero at the border, you see yourselves as one community — for good or bad.”

Meanwhile, the growing violence in Mexico is spreading to areas that were once thought immune. Calderon’s crackdown doesn’t appear to be very effective.

The violence has spread to the affluent business city of Monterrey, the beach resort of Acapulco and beyond. In remote towns like Juchitan on the Pacific coast, wealthy local families have fled a wave of kidnappings by drug gangs. [...]

“They are professionals. Their infrastructure is more powerful than the police. The authorities don’t have the resources to face up to a phenomenon like this,” said a drug expert within the Veracruz state government.

“This isn’t finished, I think it’s only just beginning,” said the expert, who asked not to be named.
[Once quiet towns engulfed by Mexico drugs war Reuters 7/18/07]

Don’t think the Mexican way of crime, including drug cartels, is not coming to America: it’s here and getting worse.

Still sticking to it’s “We’ve got bigger fish to fry” agenda, officials in the Chicago office of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement remain standing around with their thumbs in their ears as Elvira Arellano, the illegal alien ordered deported, has ended her year-long sanctuary in a Chicago church and is on her way to Los Angeles to attend a rally of her fellow anarchists before taking her case to Washington in mid-September, [Activist heads to L.A. rally, by Antonio Olivo, Chicago Tribune, Aug. 18, 2007]

If all goes according to plan, she will be joined in Los Angeles by her son, Saul, 8, a U.S. citizen, who flew ahead with a family friend, said Javier Rodriguez, whose March 25 Coalition is coordinating the planned march through downtown Los Angeles.

Rodriguez called Arellano’s decision to provoke federal immigration authorities by appearing publicly “her last fight at the O.K. Corral.”

First we heard from Arellano’s apologists that she was the new “Rosa Parks”; now she’s being put in the same company as Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday? Why not just acknowledge that her latest act of defiance is only another verse in the song she’s been singing to the feds and the MSM, “I Got Your Deportation Order, Right Here.”

It’s hard to imagine, especially after this convicted felon’s announcement only a few days ago that she planned to leave the city to promote her agenda of arrogance and disrespect, that a 24-hour watch wasn’t placed on her “sanctuary.” If, indeed, this is the case, then ICE’s indifference here only further inflames the distrust many Americans have our lame federal government that with each passing day looks more and more like the Keystone Cops .

Isn’t it time we stopped worrying about how Arellano’s would bel “be received by the immigrant community?” Who cares what millions of illegal aliens care? Terry Anderson, the outspoken radio show host in California, says it best: “If we’re not careful, we’re going to PC ourselves to death.”

As long as Arellano remains free to wipe her feet on our sovereignty, Americans worthy of the name should make sure their members of Congress hear from them loud and clear that they forbid her and her entourage from setting foot in the halls of Congress, and instead be arrested and immediately deported.

Terry is right. To hell with what Arellano’s supporters and the rest of the world thinks about sending her back to Mexico. And then we have to starting digging to determine which, if any, of the so-called “immigrant rights” organizations that feed off our tax dollars, used our money to pay for her ticket out of town.

Today is another beautiful day in sunny California. On any other Sunday morning at 8:00 A.M. PDT, I’d be sitting on my porch sipping coffee and perusing last night’s baseball box scores.

But on this particular day, I am “on assignment” for VDARE.COM.

Specifically, Peter Brimelow has asked me, as one of our editorial collective’s Democrats, to watch the debates in Iowa as long as I could do so “without throwing up.”I’m proud that I was able to carry out my task successfully. But it was ugly.

I’m not much of a Democrat but I do know that the candidates assembled in Iowa–Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd, former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel, Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson,–with their incessant self-promotion and non-stop talk about “change” is an unattractive group.

And the high praise they heaped on each other was revolting, too. I suspect the candidates have something quite different to say about their opponents when they are talking to their pillows.

Two observations that might have bearing: Obama is smoother than I expected. He got off the best line when he said that he prepared for the debate “by riding in the bumper cars at the state fair.”

And Clinton, who suggested in her opening remarks that she wasn’t quite awake, is shriller than I remembered. Maybe her voice wouldn’t sound so grating at a more civil hour.

The differences in their delivery might bode poorly for Clinton if comes down to a head-to-head match up between Obama and her.

And I hope this doesn’t sound too cynical but I was dismayed at the amount of time the candidates spoke about prayer and what its significance is to them.

Since the current White House occupant has claimed to take his direction from God and to have a special relationship with the Almighty, I would guess that religion might not be a big selling point in 2008. Of course, I could be–and probably am–wrong.

The ABC promo piece promised that the debate topics would range from “from Iraq to health care, from immigration to education.”

But in his opening remarks, host George Stephanopoulos didn’t mention immigration. And with good reason–the subject, which is the top domestic concern of Americans–never came up!

There was a little banter about trade. Clinton, who is all but married to the Indian outsourcing firm Tata Consulting Services, said with a straight face that she wants to “follow a pro-America trade policy.”

Her remark should have brought the house down but disappointingly it sailed over everyone’s head.

And education got the usual gloss-over: too many kids not graduating from high school…but no mention that they are predominantly Hispanic kids.

The good news for the Democrats–but not for Americans– is that whoever emerges from among these sad-sack candidates will face an equally sorry contender from the Republican side.