Elvira Arellano, Mother of the Year

"She and her sympathizers expect America to absolve her of her misconduct because she had a kid. Fine, take your kid back with you. That's what mothers do."
--Peter Nunez, a former federal prosecutor who teaches immigration policy at the University of San Diego

I was struck by the above quote, which appears in today's Daily News story about illegal-immigration activist Elvira Arellano, and her new efforts to influence U.S. immigration policy from Tijuana. Nunez's remark points to one of the central ironies of this whole saga: all the hand-wringing talk of "tearing families apart" from people who, through their own actions, have shown little interest in keeping families together.

This is true not only of Antonio Villaraigosa, but also of Arellano herself. For all her prattling about family unification, she's the one who, through her own brazen, public defiance of U.S. law, chose certain deportation. She's the one who has opted to leave her son here, away from his family, so that he can be trotted out at her supporters' press conferences. (We know nothing about the boy's father, and whether he and his family have any say in the boy's whereabouts, or whether he is even alive.)

Arellano has chosen to be an advocate rather than a mother, and for her son to be a prop rather than a kid. And that makes all the rhetoric about family unity a little hard to swallow. Yes, it is a tragedy that our immigration laws can divide families, but it's not immigration law that's to blame for what's happened to hers.

Immigration-reform supporters (and I count myself among them) need a new cause celebre. Because Arellano isn't helping them one bit.