Nearly four months after it began, the case involving an undocumented worker who took refuge in a Chicago storefront church last summer to avoid deportation to Mexico remains at a standstill.

Elvira Arellano was supposed to surrender to U.S. federal authorities in mid-August to be deported.  Instead, she took refuge in the Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood, saying that deporting her would deprive her U.S.-born son of his rights as a U.S. citizen.

In a recent interview in the church's second-floor office that she has turned into a center of operations for her cause, Arellano said her struggle has exposed the government's inane immigration policies, and that she has no plans to leave sanctuary of the church.

"I didn't come here to rob anybody," she told the San Antonio Express newspaper. "But I'm treated like the worst criminal in the world. I still prefer to be called a criminal than leave my son to die from hunger."

Meanwhile, the government isn't saying why it has not moved to arrest Arellano. According to the Express, Gail Montenegro, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Chicago, refused an interview and didn't respond to repeated requests for statistics on immigrant arrests and deportations in the Windy City area.

The case has been consistently in the eye of the media since Arellano’s 7-year-old son, Saul, traveled to Mexico last month and successfully lobbied the Mexican House of Representatives and the Mexican Senate to issue a resolution supporting his mother. 

To read the entire San Antonio Express story, go to: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA120606.01A.immigrant_mom.2f5386e.html