A storefront church on Chicago’s West Side that openly harbored an undocumented Mexican mother is taking on another sanctuary case.

Elvira Arellano and her U.S.-born son lived in Adalberto United Methodist Church for a year in defiance of a deportation order. Two days after she left the church last August, authorities arrested her and sent her back to Mexico.

Now 28-year-old Flor Crisóstomo has moved in.

CRISOSTOMO: A nosotros no nos dejaron más opciones…

Crisóstomo says she had no choice but to leave her three children with her mother in southwestern Mexico, and head for the United States to support them. In Chicago, she used false papers to get a job in a pallet factory called IFCO Systems. Immigration authorities raided the factory in 2006. Her legal appeals exhausted, Crisóstomo is due to surrender for deportation by today.

Adalberto’s pastor, Rev. Walter Coleman, says the church is taking her in because lawmakers have abandoned efforts to legalize the status of undocumented immigrants.

COLEMAN: We’re calling for sanctuaries to be opened throughout the country so that the voice of reality can be heard.

About one-half dozen U.S. religious groups in recent months have openly harbored immigrants wanted by the authorities. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman who declined to speak on tape said her agency has had other priorities. But that’s not good enough for Ira Mehlman, spokesman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

MEHLMAN: The people they need to be going after are the people who are leading the so-called sanctuary movement. These church officials who are engaged in civil disobedience need to be put to the test.

Whatever the consequences for Rev. Coleman, he says he’s just following the will of God.