“We are all Elvira”
Put forth on August 29, 2007 by XicanoPwr
Posted in Deportation, Immigration, La Migra, Nativism, Política Estados Unidos, Raza, activism
The deportation of immigrant rights activist Elvira Arellano by federal authorities on August 20 has been seen either as a blow or as the reigniting of the immigrant rights movement. I know I have seen my fair share of comments of support on this blog, as well a large number of vile comments about her and her plight that are still in the moderation queue. As humans, we have a tendency to demonize a person to justify our dislike. Regardless how a person worded their comment, their message was the same, Arellano is just another attention grabbing, “criminal alien and immigration fugitive,” unfairly using her American-born son as an Elián González for a pro-immigration agenda.
Arellano, the woman at the center of the storm is a 32-year old single mother, a former airport worker and undocumented immigrant. On Aug 15, 2006, Arellano took her son Saúl, born in the US and therefore a citizen, and entered Adalberto United Methodist church. Since then, she has spent a year living in that church to avoid deportation.
Arellano left Chicago with her 8-year-old son Saúl on Aug 16 and arrived in Los Angeles on Aug 18 to promote the immigrant rights movement and raise visibility for a prayer and fast vigil she had planned on Sept 12 in Washington. That ended when 15 ICE agents arrested her outside La Placita church. Immigration agents in four unmarked cars waited till she left the church, surrounded her car, and nabbed her from her son and deported her; Saúl, being a citizen, was not deported. Before she was ripped away from her crying son and taken away in handcuffs to a nearby federal detention center, Arellano was allowed to console Saúlito, she told him, “Calm down. Don’t have any fear. They can’t hurt me.”
During the year she took refuge in the church, her struggle has help put a human face on the heartless deportations of our nation’s undocumented immigrants. She not only has become the spokesperson for the New Sanctuary Movement, but a symbol of resistance for the broader immigrant rights movement.
In response to the arrest, supporters came out for a vigil in front of the ICE building in Chicago. The next morning, 150 supporters showed up at the ICE building to protest the arrest and deportation. In Los Angeles, mayor Antonio Villaraigosa released a statement on the “manner of the arrest and deportation” of Elvira Arellano. Later that night, a vigil was held in front of the Federal Building downtown. Here in Houston, a vigil was held in front of the Mickey Leland Federal Bldg on Monday evening and later in the week, a press conference was called by el Central American Resource Center (CRECEN), to vocalize our support and solidarity with Elvira and Saul.
Over the weekend, several thousand marched through downtown L.A. in a show of unity and support for Elvira. The main demand was full rights for all immigrants. Police closed off streets as hundreds of demonstrators, including many families with young children, marched up Broadway on Saturday carrying large photos of Arellano and her 8-year-old son, Saul. Others raised placards reading “We are all Elvira!”
It is not hard to speculate the reasons behind ICE’s motives in deporting her in record time. What normally would have taken days for those who face removal, this was not the case for Elvira. Oftentimes, those who do not have the resources to keep up with the rapid homeland security legal changes, become unexpectedly entangled in the system without a sense of their legal and human rights. One has to wonder about the brevity of the deportation process ICE took to deport Elvira. One could argue that she was just another victim of Homeland Security’s most recent expanded procedure of expedited removal against non-U.S. citizens, which was established by the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. Expedited removal is a procedure that enables a DHS official to remove a non-citizen without the procedural safeguards of a removal hearing or review by an immigration judge or the Board of Immigration Appeals, and significantly, including the right to counsel.
Because there is no immigration judge or the Board of Immigration Appeals review over expedited removal decisions and only limited judicial review, a low-level immigration officer’s authority to decide that an individual is removable and to order removal is virtually unchecked. The officer’s decision to place the person in expedited rather than regular removal proceedings can result in the person losing substantive rights. Indeed, there are already reports that Elvira was denied her rights. According to Adhemir Olguin, spokesperson for the Mexican Consulate in Houston, said officials are concerned with the manner ICE handled the deportation of Elvira Arellano because she was denied consular access.
The issue of deportation remains invisible too many. There is a dangerous misconception that deportations are uniform in and arbitrary across all immigrant groups; that these acts of detention and deportation are simply routine governmental practices to regulate migration flows. This is not the case. Washington’s failure to enact comprehensive immigration reform has been direct and profound consequences on real families. When laws fail to serve justly the most basic human needs, they are flawed and incomplete. Detention often occurs as part of the removal and deportation process. With limited or no due process, immigrants facing removal become confused, isolated from family members, and can be placed with violent criminals. The “detention process” is often shrouded in secrecy, with detainees being repeatedly denied prompt access to attorneys and relatives.
To learn that Elvira was denied consular access, is not surprising, in light of findings by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) in its 2005 Report on Asylum Seekers in Expedited Removal, a mandated study of the expedited removal policy to determine how the procedure was affecting asylum-seekers. The study found serious flaws in DHS’s implementation of the Expedited Removal policy that puts immigrants at risk of being returned to countries where they may face persecution, and it also documented that they were “detained inappropriately, under prison-like conditions and in actual jails.” Just recently, USCIRF found that problems it found two-years ago have not been fixed most of its recommendations were not carried out by Homeland Security and the Justice Department.
USCIRF chair Felice D. Gaer noted that “we see no significant difference between the situations of then and now—with the exception that Expedited Removal was expanded in spite of our explicit recommendation to hold off on that.”
As we begin to understand the full implications of “homeland security” on immigration, it is important we begin having a serious multi-national dialogue. Elvira Arellano’s deportation is a wake-up call for America. It’s time to say, ¡Basta! We have had enough exploitation, abuse and exclusion.
While immigrant laws and their enforcement remain a primary venue for racism in general, it has become an expression of imperialism directed inward against its own citizens and residents. As a consequence, all those who are seen as “foreign” are viewed as a legal, cultural, political, and economic threat to the security of US land, culture, and way of life.
What forces will protect us from the evils imposed on and within society under the banner of terrorism on the one hand, or under the banner of protecting us from terrorism on the other? What forces do we need to ensure that our civil liberties are not trampled on? That people are not denied their basic human rights? That our political and other leaders do not trample on the presumption of innocence until proven guilty; the protection of habeas corpus; freedom of the press; freedom of association; and equal rights under the law without fear? These are the dark clouds that currently hang over our heads, and it can only be removed through our active involvement and participation.
In order to resolve the immigration issues, we must begin a dialogue that addresses the humanitarian crisis on our borders, in our barrios, and at our detention centers. The Department of Homeland Security has cast a huge net around the immigrant community in the hopes of finding suspected terrorists to protect the security of America. So why must so many innocent people, who are not terrorists, suffer? Whose safety is being protected here? What does it mean to be an American? Who is an American?
We need to find an effective way to raise the political consciousness of our community to understand that ultimately, the dismantling of homeland security apparatuses is necessary to addressing our collective problem. For the last 20 years, the immigrant rights movement has focused itself on immigration reform that places pathways to citizenship, access to public services and family unification at the center of its core values. Because the homeland security apparatus affects all people, it is vital that all culturally diverse and multiracial peoples work in alliance and coalition with each other locally, regionally and nationally - despite ethnicity, nationality or race - towards the single objective of justice for our communities.
This is a crisis we are not facing alone - We are all Elvira!
The report card summary and the full report of USCIRF’s two-year review of its recommendations on expedited removal are posted on its web site, www.uscirf.gov.
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Tags: border, Deportation, Elvira Arellano, ICE, Immigration, Imperialism, Racism, undocumented immigrants | 
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This is the blog of Edmundo "XicanoPwr" Rocha, a social worker, an activist, freelance writer and founder and editor of The Sanctuary. My interests include: immigration reform, critical race theory and it's interaction with equality/inequality and freedom/oppression as they relate to the experiences of people of color in the Americas.
Para Justicia y Libertad is a Latino-centered political blog focusing on the humanistic perspective of politics, history, and society as they relate to the Latina/o community throughout Texas and the United States.
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Por la gran mayoría aquí en el Suroeste, Elvira Arellano ha incendido la chispa de nuestro movimiento.
People have been comparing Elvira to Rosa Parks– whomever the comparison is with, she’s clearly ignited and electrified our people against this hatred and racism as few have done since Chavez.
I definitely wouldn’t look at her deportation as a setback. These fights are never easy– it certainly wasn’t easy for American Blacks, look at the hatred, up to murder of children, that they had to endure from hateful Anglos– and hatred and racism from Anglo bigots are nothing new, it just gets amplified in the Blogosphere these days.
Hatred and bigotry among the Anglos shouldn’t discourage us, it should unite us and re-confirm our solidarity.
“We need to find an effective way to raise the political consciousness of our community to understand that ultimately, the dismantling of homeland security apparatuses is necessary to addressing our collective problem.”
An excellent point. The Patriot Act has been perverted from a tool to fight terrorists, to something used to spy on and humiliate hard-working Latinos who are declared guilty by presumption.
Another key to this, is we have to raise more collective consciousness among our people here about our true history, and the long historical association of our people and culture with the Southwest, and with Florida– as recognized directly also in the laws and treaties that followed the Mexican War. A lot of combating the bigotry of the Anglos is merely demanding the rights that are guaranteed to us by the treaties.
These treaties recognize our rights in the Southwestern states (and Florida) including our rights to property, to celebrate our culture, to use español for public purposes on an equal status with English (en las oficinas, en las escuelas, bibliotecas, votaciónes y otras lugares) and in general to have our customs and people respected. Our ancestors were roaming through California and Arizona for generations before the Mexican War– we are not illegals, it’s the bigoted Anglos who are illegal for disregarding the rights to which we are guaranteed.
It does bother me that many Latinos are trapped in states such as Arkansas, Wisconsin, Georgia, Ohio, Virginia, Minnesota, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Iowa, Missouri and other states where we have little power and, both demographically and politically, are easy targets for the Anglo haters. They work our people to death there, then try to deny us our culture and our basic rights for us and our children. By contrast in our historic homelands in the Southwest, we have the demographic, social and political strength to stand together and fight back against the Minutemen and the other bigots.
The key state for us is Arizona. Among the Southwestern states, it’s the one where the Anglo bigots still have the most power, but it’s also the one with the most rapid demographic and political changes and where, in 5 years, we will be in power, strong enough to shut up the Minutemen and other racists who harass us.
Arizona in 2007 is much like California in 1994, when Prop. 187 was passed, and the Anglo haters seemed in the ascendancy. A few short years later with continued demographic changes and political developments, we gained power, and now– despite the presence of bigots still there– we have such strength in California that no one would try to perpetrate this crap anymore.
Soon it will be the same in Arizona. The racist sheriff of Maricopa County is trying to persecute us there, and the arrogance of the Minutemen is felt in full force. But Arizona is following in California’s lead. Arizona is one of the places where we are not only strong and growing as it is, but where Latinos persecuted in states like those mentioned above– Arkansas, Ohio, Wisconsin for example, where we are too weak and dispersed– are migrating back to. We will soon have the political and demographic power to fight back effectively against the Anglo haters.
Our education is also critical. American public schools (the traditional English-only ones at least) are an absolute disaster– unsafe, violent, unable to teach anything to our kids. The reason is simply that Anglo adults hate the idea of paying tax dollars to educate children of color. So Latino children grow up unable to function in society, another way we’re kept down.
Unless we can get our kids enrolled in one of the Spanish-English double media immersion schools (which are much better in general), home-schooling is one of our best options. We can teach our kids in a safe environment, provide a healthy diet, good peer interactions without the violence and drugs, and most of all provide our kids with an actual education– parcialmente en español (good textbooks from many places in Latin America) which employers among others require– so that they can function and assert themselves here.
We should patronize Latino businesses as much possible, and provide entrepreneurial start-up funds for other Latino enterprises. We should of course, stand up for each other, and support the other Elvira Arellanos around here.
Hay muchas razones tener confidencia en el futuro para nuestra gente, porque para la primera vez en más de 150 años — desde 1848– tenemos la oportunidad para reclamar y exigir nuestros derechos!
Elvira Arellano was indeed entitled to consular access. But
consider that anyone in her position would have to identify
herself and indicate which consulate she wants to consult.
Consular access is a double edge razor to others in her position.
Ms. Arellano is delusional. She is a disaster for immigration
reform who is likely to do even more damage before she accepts
that she cannot return to the United States.
She is a disaster for immigration? This is based on what factors? What right do you have to determine what is good or bad immigration reform. Your judgmental condemnation of Arellano is a bit harsh and centers around that she is not a US citizen therefore she is not afforded the right to engage in civil disobedience. Using your argument, would you feel Gandhi delusional?
Before going back to India, Gandhi first employed his ideas of peaceful civil disobedience in the Indian community’s struggle for civil rights in South Africa. He advocated his fellow Indians to defy every “European” only law. This plan was adopted, leading to a seven-year struggle in which thousands of Indians were jailed (including Gandhi), flogged, or even shot, for striking, refusing to register, burning their registration cards, or engaging in other forms of non-violent resistance.
Would you call MLK or Rosa Parks delusional for breaking the segregation laws that were in line place in the South. Laws that existed for over a century?
It is sad to see the ugly reality of how hate and prejudice can warp good men and women and turn victims to the catchwords of prejudice and the slogans of hate.
No Blanche, it’s the Anglos here in the Southwest who are delusional if they think they can continue to just push us around like this. The Anglos have been trying for over 150 years to ignore, circumvent, even outright violate the agreements and compromises that concluded the Mexican War, to continue to deny Latinos their rights.
The people you call “illegals,” had been freely moving in the region of what’s now the Southwest US for centuries before the Mexican War, and the Latino people fought bitterly to ensure that their rights in this region were guaranteed by the legal agreements that concluded the Mexican War. The Anglos have repeatedly broken these agreements, just as they did against the Cherokee and the Sioux people that they couldn’t defeat militarily, while denying African-Americans their own most basic rights.
The Anglo bigots, the forerunners of today’s Minutemen, harassed the Latino people in the Southwest, seized our property and ranches, denied us our rights to celebrate our culture and language, arbitrarily shut down and ruined our businesses, even capped off the insults by forcing numerous mass deportations against us, culminating in the ethnic cleansing of the 1930’s. Every one of these a violation of both the letter and the spirit of the good-faith agreements negotiated between the Anglos and the Latino people after the Mexican War.
Well now, this crap is over– we are now strong enough to assert and demand our rights. And we won’t back down. Elvira like Rosa Parks broke a manifestly unjust and disgusting law, that is itself rooted in the much greater and more egregious violations of laws perpetrated by the Anglos for centuries. It’s called civil disobedience, and she has every right to assert herself in this way.
You Anglos should take heed now. We are still not organized enough to have a great effect on events in 2008, but by 2010 and 2012, you will be feeling the force of an angry sleeping giant that has been awakened by injustice, aka the Latino people, and we will be making our presence on the political scene felt so strongly that you will think twice before ever trying to insult us and our people again.
Ojalá que Uds. se ajusten a este futuro, pues podemos coexistir en paz. Pero exigimos el respecto y el reconocer de los derechos que los Anglos desde mucho han tratado negarnos, una cosa que no aguantaremos ni un día más!
The current immigration issues should be looked upon as an opportunity to show the world that this country still respects human rights and that we have not forgotten that we are a nation with a heritage of immigration. We have never been xenophobic and the frightening thing that I see is that we are so focused on restrictive policies, deportation, and removal that we are being led into an era of racism, bigotry, and discrimination that equals that of a few years ago.
Some say that we still are in an era of unequality of human rights; but we have made progress and I don’t want to see that lost. We still have a long way to go but we don’t need setbacks right now.
Get over the mindset that every immigrant, undocumented or documented, is a criminal, or a terrorist, or will be a burden on society. Give them a chance to prove themselves - to work, achieve an education, earn a place for themselves, and contribute to our culture.
We need immigration legislation, based on fairness, reasonableness, and compassion. Get out of the box and look at your family history - How did your family ever get to this country. I am glad that my Jewish grandfather who came to this country in the hold of a ship, wasn’t deported and sent back to Europe.
Pienso que elvira puede continuar peleando la causa desde mexico Por que no hacer un boicot economico a los negocios americanos mexico esta inundado de ellos setria muy bueno inducir a los mecicanos a apoyar desde mecico no consumiendo a los negocios americanos “adelante”
If you abide by the law there will be no problems. By the way, how does Mexico enforce their immigration laws in regards to Central and South Americans crossing their southern border? Or with Cubans sailing to the country??
Hmmmm????????
Bunch of Racists!
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