AP, Sept. 1, 2007
MEXICO CITY -- The 8-year-old son of deported immigrant activist Elvira Arellano was reunited with her Friday at Mexico City's airport.
Arellano said she wants her son, Saul, a U.S. citizen, to go to school in her home state of Michoacan so he can learn Spanish.
Saul, whose first trip to Mexico was in November to ask the Mexican Congress to lobby Washington to stop his mother's deportation, received a Mexican passport from his mother as proof of his newly obtained dual citizenship.
They plan to renew the boy's U.S. passport, something he could not do in the United States in the absence of his mother.
Arellano, 32, who was in the U.S. illegally for several years, took sanctuary at Chicago's Adalberto United Methodist Church in defiance of a deportation order. She lived there with her son for a year.
She left the church in August to attend rallies in Los Angeles and was arrested and deported within hours to Tijuana.
Saul, who traveled from Chicago with Adalberto United's pastor, the Rev. Walter Coleman, had little to say to reporters. His mother said the boy told her that "he wants to keep fighting so I can go back with him to the United States."
Arellano said she wanted her son by her side as she fights for the legalization of the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. and for the rights of illegal Central American immigrants in Mexico.
"In this battle he was the one who kept me on my feet," Arellano said. "If I want to keep fighting from here, I need him with me."
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