chicagotribune.com
Editorial
A deportee's child
August 21, 2007
Elvira Arellano was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in Los Angeles Sunday afternoon, but before being led away, she took a moment to comfort her tearful 8-year-old son. According to immigration activist Emma Lozano, she told the boy: "Calm down. Don't have any fear. They can't hurt me."
Then the single mother was taken away from her son and promptly deported to her native Mexico.
The poignant image on the front page of the Tribune was of young Saul holding his head and looking inconsolable after the arrest. This is not the first, of course, that Americans knew of him. He often has been pushed under the klieg lights to recite lines about the injustice of his mother's treatment and his fear of losing her to deportation.
While his mother holed up at Chicago's Adalberto United Methodist Church for the last year defying authorities, Saul has been trotted out to march at the head of the Puerto Rican People's Parade, speak at rallies, visit lawmakers in the Mexican parliament and go on TV. Instead of trying to make his childhood as normal as possible under the circumstances, Arellano has assigned him the role of public advocate -- a heavy burden for a child.
Saul went to Mexico Monday to be with his mother but will return to the U.S. in September to go to school, a family friend and pastor said.
It's truly sad to see Arellano and her son separated. But if you want to place blame for that painful spectacle, it belongs on her, not ICE. Saul is an American citizen because he was born in this country -- a couple of years after his mother was first deported after entering the country illegally. And if mother and child are separated again, it's not because the U.S. government insists on keeping them apart.
In fact, the boy is free to go to Mexico to be with her -- and to come back to the United States if and when he chooses. But that simple reality is not as powerful as the images that have been manipulated on her behalf.
Her circumstances are not much different from those of millions of other illegal immigrants who have children and are subject to removal if they are apprehended by immigration authorities. Thanks to the constitutional provision that confers citizenship on anyone born on American soil, many of those kids are legally entitled to stay. If their parents are expelled, though, they can remain here only at the price of breaking up the family.
There is a good case to be made that illegal immigrants who have worked and stayed out of trouble should be given a chance to earn their way to legal status. But foreigners who come here illegally, or overstay valid visas, can't be excused from obeying the law merely because they have children who are U.S. citizens.
Arellano chose to take that risk when she came here and now she is paying the price. Unfortunately, her son, who has had little choice in these matters, also will suffer the consequences.
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune
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