Mexico City – Mexico’s Congress was swayed Tuesday by a 7-year-old boy on a mission to save his mom.
Second-grader Saul Arellano, a U.S. citizen, appeared in Mexico’s 500-member Chamber of Deputies to plead for help in lobbying Washington to stop the deportation of his mother, an illegal immigrant who has taken refuge in a Chicago church.
His efforts paid off with a resolution calling on the Bush administration to suspend the deportation of Elvira Arellano and any other illegal-immigrant parents of U.S. citizens.
If the U.S. agrees, it would “create a precedent that will benefit more than 4.9 million children who have been born in the United States and whose parents live under the threat of deportation,” said Mexican congressman Jose Jacques, who lived in the United States for 33 years and has an American daughter and granddaughter.
Flashing cameras and swarms of reporters surrounded the boy as he entered the chamber. But instead of stepping to the podium, he was swept into a side room, where he hid his face and ducked under a table.
“I think being so small he was kind of freaked,” family friend Jesus Carlin said.
Saul then took the microphone and spoke to reporters in Spanish, describing what he wanted from Mexico’s lawmakers: “I want them to tell President Bush to end the deportations so that my mother and other families can stay together in the United States.”
U.S. officials say there is no right to sanctuary in a church under U.S. law, and nothing to prevent them from arresting Elvira Arellano, who has lived at the church since Aug. 15, the day she was supposed to surrender for deportation. So far, they have not moved to seize her.
Arellano, 31, said she was nervous about sending her son to Mexico, and Saul was afraid she would be deported while he was away.
“I told him to be calm, everything would be fine … ” she said.
