Elvira Arellano runs for Mexican Congress

Remember Elvira Arellano? She was an illegal immigrant who took sanctuary in a Chicago church with her son for a year though she was eventually arrested and deported in 2007. In the near two years that she has been split from her son, she has become an activist seeking fairer immigration laws in the U.S. such as participating in a protest during Barack Obama’s trip to Mexico this year.

Arellano’s latest move is her attempt to run for a seat on Mexico’s Congress. She has allied herself with the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD, in Spanish) in her bid to represent a district in Tijuana. Yet her campaign has been described as being a “long shot” with her main rival being the brother of the governor of Baja California.

Her opponents claim that she is an outsider though her platform centered on immigration is surely a concern for an electorate living so close to the U.S.

The Tijuana newspaper El Mexicano critiqued a recent debate performance by noting that Arellano spoke with the accent of a pocho, pejorative slang for a Mexican who lives in the U.S.

Arellano, who was raised and lives in the southwestern state of Michoacan, justifies her candidacy by noting that she started a shelter for migrants in Tijuana in 2007 and that many people living in that city are either migrating to the U.S. or have been recently deported.

"It's true that I didn't really know Tijuana," Arellano said in a telephone interview. "What I do know is the needs of families. I know the reasons we have to immigrate to the United States. I lived the same things that thousands of people here in Tijuana have lived."

The election is set to take place this Sunday.

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Online Sources- Guardian UK, Chicago Tribune, UPI, Vodpod, cbs2chicago.com