From August 2006 through August 2007, Elvira Arellano, an undocumented Mexican immigrant, lived in a church on Chicago's West Side with her U.S.-born 7-year-old son, Saul, to avoid a deportation order. Her plight played out in Chicago-area and national media, piggybacking on a nationwide debate on immigration. This study focuses on one piece of media coverage of the Arellano controversy: a column written by the Chicago Sun-Times journalist Mary Mitchell, titled “Blacks Know Rosa Parks and You, Arellano, Are No Rosa Parks,” published in August 2006. The controversial column spurred reaction from journalists and readers from other Chicago-area newspapers, mostly notably, Hoy, a Spanish-language daily. This study will illustrate how Arellano is simultaneously positioned as a member of an in-group of “Us” or an out-group of “Them” in the Sun-Times and Hoy and will correlate this Us-Them positioning with differences in the perceived and/or actual audience of each newspaper.
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