Chicago immigration activist marks year in church (AP c/o International Herald Tribune)

Chicago immigration activist marks year in church

The Associated Press
Published: January 28, 2009

Flor Crisostomo has quietly spent the last year inside a Chicago church writing letters, meeting with school groups and organizing political demonstrations toward her goal of U.S. immigration reform.

The illegal immigrant has defied a deportation order to her native Mexico and lived at Adalberto United Methodist Church, hoping to draw attention to immigration reform at a time when the economy and election of a new U.S. president have taken center stage.

"We have to have a plan," she told The Associated Press late Tuesday, the eve of her one-year anniversary at the church. "My people need a voice."

The 29-year-old Crisostomo said she has no immediate plans to leave, unlike immigration activist Elvira Arellano, who announced the end of her sanctuary at the same church in 2007 on her one-year anniversary. She was arrested and deported to Mexico shortly after leaving.

Crisostomo, who has also pushed for a renegotiation of North American Free Trade Agreement, said her work isn't done and she wants President Barack Obama to make good on campaign promises for reform. She wrote an open letter to Obama and planned to read it Wednesday at a news conference at the church.

"No one wants to end the system of undocumented labor more than the undocumented. That system left me unprotected from exploitation as a worker and unable to visit my children in Mexico. With legalization, we can also have employment verification and enforcement without destroying the lives of families and the economy of the Latino community," she wrote, according to a copy of the letter sent to The Associated Press.

Crisostomo said the hardest part about the last year has been getting politicians to listen to her message and living without her three children who are in Mexico with their grandmother.

"My children are strong and they understand why I am fighting," she said.

Crisostomo left her three children in Iguala Guerrero, Mexico, in 2000 when she paid a smuggler to drive her across the border. She said she was unable to find a job in Mexico that would support her family.

Once in the U.S., she worked at a factory and was able to send home hundreds of dollars each week for her family. But she was arrested by immigration authorities in 2006, during raids on IFCO Systems North America sites across the country. She was scheduled for deportation, but took sanctuary at the church instead.

Agents with Immigration Customs and Enforcement have not made attempts to go inside the church and arrest her.