On Elvira Arelleno's deportation: Cosmic justice awaits ICE? *

* This post is being updated below.

Elvira Arellano, an undocumented immigrant who spent an entire year in sanctuary in a Chicago church to avoid deportation, was arrested outside La Placita church at Olvera Street on Sunday and deported. Immigration agents in unmarked cars waited till she left the church, the spiritual birthplace of Los Angeles, surrounded her car, and nabbed her from her 8-year-old U.S.-born son Saul. She told Saul in the few moments she was allowed to console him, "Calm down. Don't have any fear. They can't hurt me."

Arellano was taken to an ICE facility in Santa Ana and then booted into Mexico at San Ysidro. Arellano has been widely photographed with a T-shirt that reads, "Who Would Jesus Deport?" and in that spirit I'm drawn back to a comment I left on my previous post on Arellano in response to a tired and fundamentally bigoted argument against "lawbreakers":

And I think that comparing Elvira Arellano to Rosa Parks is actually a sign of honor and respect, and an homage to her name and what Ms. Parks stood for: justice, compassion, and equal protection under the law. Ms. Parks was also denounced in her time -- by people like you.

So you keep wasting your time and energy in LaValle, WI against a human wave that is more or less unofficially welcomed by our government, while the rest of us in more progressive and pragmatic American cities get on with our lives and embrace the cultures and the dynamism that immigrants bring to our societies, as they have since the birth of this nation.

I imagine ICE agents feel pretty damn good about themselves today, arresting a young woman who posed no kind of threat to nobody, in front of her son outside a small church in the middle of L.A., but many of us believe in more cosmic forms of justice, justice that some believe will eventually catch up with the architects and agents of these destroyers of families and the sacred bonds that unite people.

Since 2004, at least 62 immigrants have died in ICE custody. Three have died since July. One of them, Victoria Arellano, a transgender woman and AIDS patient, died at a hospital in San Pedro after not receiving her medication. The Washington Post reported: "As she vomited blood, fellow inmates cared for her in vain."

* Links: L.A. Times, AP, Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune's Antonio Olivo, who has been covering this story since the beginning. It rained in Chicago last night:

Amid heavy rainfall Sunday night, about three dozen people sang, and read passages from the Bible during a vigil Sunday night outside the Chicago headquarters of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement downtown to show their disapproval of her arrest. They sang, prayed, read from the Bible.

* More updates later.

** ADD: CBS2 reports protests are growing in Chicago over Elvira's deportation. Vigils are planned for tonight in downtown L.A. for Elvira, and a separate vigil was announced by Bienestar last week for Victoria Arellano (no relation to Elvira) at 6 p.m. at 300 N. Los Angeles Street.

** ADD: Watch the ICE press conference video feed from KTLA at the LAT current story link. The pale bald-headed thug you see here with the robo-cop voice and the sinister eyebrows is apparently Jim Hayes, director of the ICE office in L.A. He's there to keep pushing the characterization of Arellano as a "criminal fugitive alien," and to deflect the inconsistencies presented when you deport a non-threat of a young mother while letting all those "criminal fugitive aliens" keep picking Hayes' fruits and vegetables in the Central Valley. I wonder what God he prays to.

** ADD: It's hot and I can admit that I'm letting my visceral reactions to this story bubble up on Intersections, conjuring up magical karma and all, but there are many practical matters to address. What now? Less than a day after being deported, Elvira Arellano seems resigned to the fact that she'll have to stay put in Mexico indefinitely, leaving the rearing of her 8-year-old son to her friends in the immigrant rights' movement in Chicago.  Antonio Olivo reached Elvira today in Tijuana. From the Chicago Tribune story: "The only thing I can do is stay in Mexico." She also told Olivo that ICE officials "were angry with me for everything I have done."

** ADD: See post above, "L.A. mayor to ICE re Elvira: Brief me next time."

Comments

[Gustavo Arellano]

A quick correction: Victoria Arellano died in San Pedro, not Santa Ana. Hasn't been a good week for the Arellano name...

[Daniel H.]

Corrected. Thank you.

[ted]

What are the chances of the Weekly covering this with the fervor it deserves? Immigration is probably the #1 political issue here in LA and the Weekly does not seem to be the leader on the issue, as it should be. That is somewhat disappointing especially as I can see the knowledge and understanding you bring to the story and the issue at large.

[Daniel H.]

Thanks for your vote of confidence ted. I've been watching this story, but only from afar. I will communicate your thoughts to my bosses.

[border sound]

Learning about Arrellano's deportation creates a visceral reaction, indeed. Her story transplants me back to when I was a child about the age of Arrellano's own son, rehearsing with my undocumented mother how I would plead with the court if she was ever deported. I can only imagine the pain Arrellano's son must be undergoing. The morally reprehensible deportation of Arrellano should continue to concern Villaraigosa as Arrellano's son is an example of the MANY MANY MANY children growing up in Los Angeles in mixed immigration status families.