(AP) CHICAGO Immigration enforcement officers do not plan to enter a storefront church on the city's West Side where an activist has sought sanctuary since she was scheduled to be deported this week, a government official said Friday. Elvira Arellano and her 7-year-old son have been living in the Adalberto United Methodist Church since Tuesday when the 31-year-old single mother was supposed to surrender to authorities for deportation to Mexico.
Officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had said they would apprehend Arellano at a time and place "of their choosing" and that nothing prevented them from going into the church. But on Friday, a government official close to the case said immigration agents have decided against entering the church to remove Arellano.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because it is against ICE policy to discuss operational matters, said the Arellano case carries "no more priority than any of the other 500,000 fugitives nationally."
She will be apprehended "at an appropriate time and place," the official said.
Arellano said Friday that she was unaware of the decision.
Rev. Walter Coleman, the church's pastor, said the decision gives Arellano more time to fight for a stay of deportation.
"We are very thankful to God that there is a space that has been created where the voice of family unity can be heard," he said.
Activists on both sides of the immigration issue across the U.S. are following Arellano's plight. Dolores Huerta, a leader in the effort to organize the nation's farm workers, visited Arellano on Thursday.
Arellano was deported shortly after illegally crossing into the United States in 1997. She returned within days, living for three years in Oregon before moving to Chicago in 2000. She was arrested two years later at O'Hare International Airport, where she was working as a cleaning woman, and convicted of working under a false Social Security number.
In the years since her 2002 arrest, she has become a vocal proponent for immigration reform. Arellano, whose son is a U.S. citizen, is president of United Latino Family, a group that lobbies for families that could be split by deportation.
She says she wants to stay in the U.S. to provide a better life for her son.
While she has remained inside the church the last few days, she said her son has ventured out in front of the building to play, but never without a companion.
"I don't want him to be out there for very long," she said in Spanish.