Chicago’s ‘Illegal Woman in the Church

More than just “the illegal woman in the church,” as some brand

her, Elvira Arellano has a name and a story. But like current U.S.

immigration law, it’s complicated and colored in shades of gray rather than black and white.

The 31-year-old single mother was to report to the Chicago office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation one Tuesday morning in mid-August.

Instead, Arellano took her seven-year-old, U.S.-born son Saúl and only the clothes on her back to St. Adalberto, the West side storefront church she has called her spiritual home since arriving in Chicago six years ago. There she claimed holy sanctuary.

Her odyssey began in August 1997. She quit her $30-a-week market job in central Mexico to search for work that would enable her to provide adequate medical care for her parents, both of whom had become debilitated by illness. She traveled north, bought a fake ID, and attempted to cross the U.S. border. She was detained and returned to Mexico.

Three days later, Arellano walked through an exit turnstile separating the border towns of Mexicali and Calexico. She made her way to Washington State, found a job as a nanny and for three years sent money home to her parents. There she met her son’s father and gave birth to Saúl. When their relationship dissolved in 2000, Arellano made her way to Chicago.

She was happily working as a cleaning lady at O’Hare International Airport when the 9/11 terrorist attacks set off the chain of events that again put her in contact with La Migra.

“In December of 2002, eight federal officers came to my apartment. They asked me if I had guns, if I ...