Illegal Immigrant Hijacks Methodist Church

Is a Chicago church breaking the law by harboring an illegal immigrant? Quite simply, yes. Thirty-one-year-old Elvira Arellano, who is an illegal Mexican immigrant, took refuge inside a United Methodist church with her son, rather face deportation.

Not only is pastor Walter Coleman breaking the law, he is not helping the problem. If he wishes to be proactive in shaping immigration reform, allowing someone who the government wishes to legally deport is not the way to do it. Like many others who enter this country illegally, this is not the first time that ICE has acted against Miss Arellano. She was previously arrested, deported, re-entered illegally again and then had a child here. This is the defintion of an anchor baby.

While several immigration activists relate Arellano to Rosa Parks, a comparison that I find ridiculous and distasteful, I would suggest that Arellano did not take a seat in the back of the bus, rather, she hijacked the bus for her own purposes.

The leadership of the Methodist church needs to step in on this one. Pastor Coleman has lost his objectivity and has made it clear that at his church they do not observe the law. This is not an example of how to open a dialogue of reform, rather, it is only creating a wider gap.