Almost Nobody Shows Up at Criminal Beaner March in L.A.

http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2007Aug25/0,4670,ImmigrationActivist,00.html

Immigration Activists March in L.A.

Saturday, August 25, 2007

LOS ANGELES - Immigrant rights activists marched through downtown Saturday

in support of a deported illegal immigrant who spent nearly a year huddled

inside a Chicago church to avoid being separated from her U.S.-born son.

Elvira Arellano, 32, was sent back to her native Mexico last weekend after

traveling to Los Angeles to attend a rally for the overhaul of U.S.

immigration laws.

"It's an effort by all immigrant rights groups to come together and

re-energize the whole movement, in solidarity with Elvira," said college

student Marylou Cabral, 20.

Police closed off streets as hundreds of demonstrators, including many

families with young children, marched up Broadway carrying large photos of

Arellano and her 8-year-old son, Saul. Others waved flags, banged drums or

raised placards reading "We are all Elvira!"

Organizers said more than 2,000 people demonstrated, but authorities said it

was closer to 600.

At the end of the march, a stage was set up and dozens of speakers called

for a path to citizenship for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in

the country.

Arellano became an activist and a symbol for illegal immigrant parents by

defying her deportation order and speaking out from her sanctuary in

Chicago's Adalberto United Methodist Church, where she had stayed with her

son since Aug. 15, 2006.

She recently announced that she was leaving Chicago to lobby lawmakers in

Washington, D.C. On Sunday, shortly after she spoke at a rally in a Los

Angeles church, she was detained by immigration agents and deported.

Arellano is now residing in Tijuana, only about 100 miles from where she

says she entered the United States illegally in 1997.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says it deported 149,376 people

from Oct. 1 to June 18, mainly by targeting homes, offices and factories.

That's on pace to match last year's total of nearly 200,000 and far higher

than the annual tallies in the early part of this decade.