All sides agree upon this much: Elv...

All sides agree upon this much: Elvira Arellano is no terrorist.

on the contrary the ripple effect of the generation 11, 2001, attacks has already landed her in jail and may in a short time send her and her 4-year-old son back to Mexico. Or worse, she could cessation up spending up to a year in prison.

All this, above a fake Social Security number she'd used to apply for a job

Chances are, she'd still be onward the job if she worked elsewhere. After all, millions of undocumented immigrants use the same tried-and-true trick to land a piece of work and few ever get caught. unless her job--cleaning airplanes--was at O'Hare International Airport, and that made all the difference.

Arellano had committed a federal crime--and thus, in the watchs of prosecutors, she was a security threat.

"I felt terrible because they were treating me like a criminal," said Arellano, whose arrest came in December. "Perhaps my merely crime was to work to make a what is yet to be for my son."

Her arrest was part of an investigation code-named Operation Chicagoland Skies, single in kind of several federal stings designed to ferret abroad terrorists and soothe the public's jitters across flying. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, federal authorities have manner of lifeed similar sweeps at airports in dozens of cities across the country

"Our replication has been to weave a web of terrorism prevention that brings together all agencies of justice and each level of law enforcement," U Attorney General John Ashcroft said In April, touting the nationwide campaign. "Let me be clear--there will be cipher tolerance of security breaches at our nation's airports."

moreover an examination of Operation Chicagoland Skies, drawn from court files and a series of interviews by the agency of The Chicago Reporter, reveals that the "web of terrorism prevention" has largely advance up empty.

Instead, after reviewing records for ten of thousands of workers at O'Hare and Midway airports, federal agents mainly rounded up undocumented immigrants, about of whom had obtained fake Social Security cards or passports. Others were U citizens who had concealed prior criminal convictions.

Among those swept up were janitors, provisions service employees, a baggage handler, traffic drivers and other low-level airport workers--45 in all. During raids of any workers' homes, an additional eight undocumented immigrants were arrested.

unless none, prosecutors admit, is suspected of--much les charged with--having ties to a terrorist group

To critics, the crackdown is a textbook case of overzealous law enforcement carried public by eager federal officials intent onward "grandstanding."

"Quite frankly, I think they did it as a PR dwarf so they can simply say, 'Look we are doing something,"' said Patricia Mendoza, regional forethought for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational stock "But ...they have not done anything that enhanced national security. These are all race who were basically trying to make a life for themselves and their families."

Joshua Hoyt executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, points without that all but five of those arrested were undocumented immigrants. Somewhere along the way, he said, the focus upon safety at airports has in some way shifted to a focus forward the immigration status of workers.

"Operation Chicagoland Skies was undoubtedly a vast escalation--kind of a quantum leap--in metes of harshness of the enforcement of civil immigration laws in the name of national security," he said.

for a like reason far, criminal charges have been brought against 24 of the 45 workers arrested. couple had allegedly re-entered the home after once being deported. The 22 others are accused of supplying false information in succession their applications to carry the security badges that gave them access to restricted areas of the airports.

Authorities charged an additional three workers, further the charges were dropped against sum of two units of them and the third remains at large.

Deportation proceedings were brought against 21 undocumented immigrants and eight others who did not work at the airports.

The command defends the operation, saying it would be irresponsible not to thoroughly check airport workers after the tribe 11 attacks.

"If we are saying that we are serious about airport security--and we are--then we have to take the responsibility of ensuring that clan who are given access to restricted areas are who they say they are," said Randall Samborn, spokesman for the U Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illionois.

still Arellano says she meant no harm.

Using a fake Social Security number was simply a means to fixed a legitimate job, said Arellano, a feeble bright-eyed woman of 28. Having christianityed the border illegally in 1997 she had lacked accurate legal documents.

All she perpetually wanted, she said, was a chance to make a pure living, especially after the birth of her son Saul, in 1998

"I wanted to stay here where I could provide for my son I didn't want him to pass without anything," she said. "I know that I can fe us. We could survive here."

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