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 News from Around the Americas | January 2008 
2nd Migrant Flees to Chicago Church
 Traci Carl - Associated Press
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| | Flor Crisostomo, an illegal immigrant from Mexico arrested at a workplace raid at a Chicago site of IFCO Systems in 2006, speaks in Adalberto United Methodist Church where she sought sanctuary Monday, Jan. 28, 2008 in Chicago to avoid deportation. Crisostomo says she knows her action will almost certainly lead to deportation or imprisonment. But she says she had to act to try and change U.S. immigration laws. (AP/M. Spencer Green) | | |
Mexico City - A deported Mexican migrant who holed up in a Chicago church to fight for immigrants' rights rallied support Tuesday for another woman now seeking refuge in the same building.
In a telephone interview with The Associated Press, Elvira Arellano said 28-year-old Flor Crisostomo's situation showed the need for U.S. immigration reform.
"She has three kids who depend on her and what she sends from the U.S.," Arellano said.
Crisostomo took refuge in the Adalberto United Methodist Church after the Board of Immigration Appeals ordered her to leave the United States by Monday. The single mother paid a smuggler to sneak her into the U.S. in 2000 and has sent money to her children in her hometown of Iguala in southern Guerrero state.
Arellano, who sought sanctuary for a year, was deported to Mexico in August when she left the church to visit Los Angeles. She lives in a small town in western Mexico with her son, a U.S. citizen, and writes columns for U.S. newspapers.
Her son is going to school and trying to adapt to life in Mexico, but "he really wants to return to the U.S.," she said.
She said she hoped the immigrant community in the U.S. would rally around Crisostomo's case as they did hers.
"Undocumented immigrants are living there in the darkness, fearing deportation and being separated from their families," she said.
Arellano and Crisostomo became friends and fellow activists after Crisostomo was arrested during a 2006 raid on IFCO Systems, a manufacturer of crates and pallets in Chicago.
When Arellano took refuge in the church, Crisostomo brought food and took Arellano's clothes to be washed.
When Crisostomo followed in Arellano's footsteps and told reporters Monday that she wasn't leaving the building, Arellano called her from Mexico to urge her friend to stay strong.
"Only by fighting is it possible to know what you can accomplish," Arellano said. |
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