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Saul Arellano gets a boost every time a stranger recognizes him on the street, pinches his cheeks and calls him "Saulito." It reminds him of the Chicago community that raised him, and what he owes them and his country.

A decade ago, Saul's mother, Elvira Arellano, became a lightning rod in the nation's immigration debate when she sought sanctuary in a Humboldt Park church while fighting her second deportation back to Mexico. Her son, born in the U.S., has joined her as an immigration advocate, serving as a symbol of why so many people live in the U.S. illegally to find better opportunities for their children.

After his mother was deported in 2007, young Saul who went to live with her in Mexico took up her mantle, traveling back and forth between the U.S. and Mexico, lobbying for immigration reform. In 2014, Elvira Arellano returned to the U.S. illegally with Saul and his then-infant brother. Crossing the border a third time to secure a brighter future for her sons was worth the risk, she said.

On Friday, Saul Arellano is set to fulfill his mother's dream of seeing her son graduate from high school. He hopes to attend Northeastern Illinois University in the fall with tuition provided by an unexpected donor. He plans to pursue a career fighting for justice.

"People actually believe in what we're doing," said Saul Arellano, now 18. "That's all I need, just one person who believes that I'm doing something right."

Saul was born in 1998 in Yakima, Wash., where his mother first went to live and work with her cousins, one year after she was first deported for crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

Saul came with his mother to Chicago more than two years later. She got a job cleaning at O'Hare International Airport and bought a house. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, federal agents came to her home at dawn as part of Operation Tarmac, a nationwide sweep of airport employees living in the U.S. illegally.

In addition to re-entering the country illegally after a prior deportation, Elvira Arellano had been working with a fake Social Security number. She fought every turn of her case and won at least three stays of deportation. But in August 2006, instead of showing up at the Department of Homeland Security for removal, she stepped up to the pulpit of Adalberto United Methodist Church in the Humboldt Park neighborhood, vowing to stay in the church indefinitely with her son.

The move catapulted the mother and son to the front lines of an international debate. Critics of illegal immigration believed Elvira Arellano was using her son to justify staying in the U.S. and exploiting him by putting him before TV cameras and politicians.

During news conferences, 7-year-old Saul stood at his mother's side, playing with his action figures. He missed his own bed and the Nintendo game he left behind at their home in Pilsen, he said.

Still, whenever Elvira Arellano proposed giving up and going to Mexico, young Saul said no. He wanted to stay and become a Chicago firefighter. "I want to help people," he told the Tribune in 2007.

Beti Guevara, the assistant pastor of the church where the Arellanos took refuge, said the year living inside Adalberto robbed Saul of some of his childhood. He lashed out, often kicking and punching anyone who came near his mother. Guevara relied on the nearby Union League Boys & Girls Club as an outlet for his pent-up angst.

"This kid lived in fear," said Guevara. "The only relief he had was the Boys & Girls Club. I snuck him through the back door and then he became a kid."

Unlike his mother, Saul could come and go from the church freely. He attended second grade at Cooper Elementary School in Pilsen and went to occasional sleepovers. The child spoke at immigration reform rallies outside the White House, and in Los Angeles, Boston and Miami. He went to Mexico City to address the Mexican parliament, which adopted a resolution opposing the U.S. effort to deport his mother.

In August 2007, a year after taking sanctuary in the church, Elvira Arellano was arrested in Los Angeles, where she and Saul had traveled for an immigration reform rally. Because of her prior deportation and the attention her case had drawn, she was deported that same day. Saul joined her to live in Mexico a month later, after attending a number of other immigration reform rallies around the country.

As the mother and son's activism continued in Mexico, Elvira Arellano dodged gunfire at rallies, received death threats and locked the doors of her home in Michoacan to prevent kidnappers from taking Saul, she said. Saul's classmates in the southwestern Mexican state spoke wistfully of life in America, he said. But the hatred he says he has experienced here did not match what they imagined.

In 2014, Elvira Arellano escorted a group of Central American asylum seekers to the U.S. border and encouraged them to cross. She called her then teenage son Saul and suggested he join her in doing the same. They both crossed the border and were detained. As a U.S. citizen, he was released right away. His mother, having crossed the border illegally a third time, was released a few days later pending a ruling on her asylum.

They returned to Humboldt Park where the largely Puerto Rican community had rallied around them years earlier.

Saul enrolled in Pedro Albizu Campos High School, a charter school affiliated with the Puerto Rican Cultural Center. It was Virginia Boyle's first year teaching at the school. Saul remembers in the six weeks left of his freshman year, she assigned him 10 novels to help perfect his English and give him some perspective.

She immediately recognized his drive to succeed and create a better world.

"Even then he knew that his life was different and that he was actually living his own life, but that he was playing a role in a larger social drama," said Boyle, who has taught him off and on ever since and still serves as one of his mentors. "That involved his mother, of course, but involved so many issues immigration, family separation, policy. Saul, of course with his mother, was right there alongside all of that."

Later, because he kept up his grades, Saul was part of a select cohort of students invited to take advanced placement exams, for which Boyle helped him prepare. He earned 12 units of college credit.

Saul has remained an activist both alongside his mother and on his own.

The day after the inauguration of President Donald Trump who has said illegal immigration endangers public safety and has vowed a crackdown Saul joined a student walkout during the school day. In April, he protested Trump's immigration policies on Capitol Hill with more than a dozen other Chicago-area children, all U.S. citizens, who have a parent who has been deported or is at risk of deportation.

"I feel this is our calling," Saul said. "We all have a reason why we're here. I strongly believe we're setting ourselves up to do better. I'm hoping in the future I can do way better."

Saul said he has struggled to balance the demands of being a student and an activist with helping his mother pay the bills and raise his 3-year-old brother Emiliano, a Mexican citizen, who, like his mother, has a pending application for asylum. Saul holds down multiple part-time jobs waiting tables at a seafood restaurant and mentoring 5-, 6- and 7-year-olds with their homework at the Boys & Girls Club.

Hector Perez, vice president of club services for Union League Boys &Girls Club, said many kids Saul's age are often on their phones, hanging out, having a good time.

"You don't see Saul doing any of that," Perez said. "He's so mature. ... He's got a really powerful message of not giving up the fight for your rights and stand for what you believe in."

That work ethic is what led Jim and Ginger Meyer to make an offer Saul could not refuse. Earlier this spring, Saul competed for a college scholarship from the Boys & Girls Club that he did not win. But the Meyers were so moved by his story that they offered to cover tuition at the college of his choice.

"He's a role model," said Ginger Meyer, whose husband, Jim, is on the board of the Boys & Girls Club. "We are just helping someone who is doing something much bigger. He's already given so much to our country through what he has done in the Boys & Girls Club. ... This is what we would want from all of our citizens."

After a three-year wait, Elvira Arellano presents her case for asylum to an immigration judge this September. If she loses, she will have to leave her older son behind.

"Saul has a lot of dreams to study at the university," she said in Spanish through a translator. "He's independent. I don't have to worry as much for him."

Saul does not want her to give up the fight. He wants his brother to have the same opportunities.

"I've come to realize everything my mom has told me was right," he said. "Everything she fought for was right. She did it for me."

mbrachear@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @TribSeeker

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Son of immigration activist who sought sanctuary in Chicago church to graduate high school - Chicago Tribune