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CBS 2's Rafael Romo contributed to this report.
CHICAGO (CBS) ― Illegal immigrant turned immigration activist Elvira Arellano is risking arrest by taking a trip to Los Angeles, but she is taking precautions.

Arellano and her son drove to L.A. for an immigration rally Saturday. She didn't go to the event; she's hiding out in a church -- the same way she avoided deportation in Chicago.

As CBS 2's Rafael Romo reports, Arellano traveled from Adalberto Methodist Church in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood to another church in an L.A. Mexican neighborhood.

She chose not to participate in an immigration march attended by hundreds in downtown Los Angeles at noon, sending instead her 8-year-old son, Saul, a citizen of the United States.

She traveled to California by car where she was to meet with immigration activists to talk about her upcoming trip to Washington, D.C.

"Elvira chose to go to LA as a way of… to promote the Washington trip and she's also… she did it so she can bring to the light and other areas the crisis of the families being separated right now," said supporter Tanya Lozano.

But Arellanos is still considered a fugitive and is subject to arrest at any moment.

"There's always that concern, but she has people that love her, that's with her in the journey so she feels safe. She's with the pastor," Lozano said.

Pastor Walter Coleman of Adalberto Methodist Church announced a year ago that he was allowing Arellano to stay at his church in the Humboldt Park neighborhood.

"In this case we feel we have to obey God; that's what we have to do no matter what the consequences are," Coleman said. "I'm a lot more afraid of God than I am of Homeland Security."

Lozano, who is in Los Angeles, declined to say whether Arellano's 8-year-old son, Saul, is with her.

She also declined to give specifics about when Arellano left the storefront church, but Arellano's last public appearance there was Wednesday, when she announced plans to travel next month to Washington, D.C., in what many expected to be her first venture from the church.

Arellano plans a press conference at La Placita, which Lozano described as a prominent Catholic church.

"I'm not criminal; I'm not terrorist," Arellano said in August 2006.

Last Wednesday, exactly a year since Arellano sought sanctuary at the church, she announced a trip to Washington.

"I will go to pray and fast in front of Congress," Arellano said. "I will go with my Bible and my son."

"She's truly today the national leader in this country of the entire Latino community," said Jose Lopez of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center

In a statement earlier this week, immigration and customs enforcement authorities said that Arellano "failed to surrender for deportation and is now an immigration fugitive."

They also said that "ICE's statutory mandate is to fairly enforce the nation's immigration laws without regard for an alien's ability to generate media attention."

On Wednesday, Arellano announced she would travel to Washington, D.C., to lobby for immigration reform and participate in a prayer meeting Sept. 12.

Lozano said those plans haven't changed.

Arellano came illegally to the U.S. in 1997 through Washington state. She was deported shortly thereafter, but returned and worked different jobs, including childcare. She moved to Illinois in 2000 because she had friends in the Chicago area and took a job cleaning planes at O'Hare International Airport.

She was arrested in 2002 at O'Hare and later convicted of working under a false Social Security number. She was to surrender to authorities a year ago, but decided instead to take refuge at her church to avoid deportation and separation from her son, who is a U.S. citizen.

Last year, Coleman explained his decision to allow Arellano to stay in his church.

"First of all, she's not a fugitive. She's told them where she is," Coleman said last year. "She's right here and through you almost all the world knows exactly where she is and she's not hiding and she's not running."

Arellano has since become an international symbol of the struggles of illegal immigrant parents and a source of controversy, praised for her steadfastness and criticized as a scofflaw.

"Elvira Arellano is not Rosa Parks and from our point view we are not worried… we don't care if she sits on the front of the bus, or the back of the bus," said Robert Klein Engler, a member of the Illinois Minuteman Project. "We just want that bus headed towards Mexico."

Since there is a current order of deportation against Arellano, she may be deported now that she is out of the church. But she says she won't leave without a fight.

"I believe in my heart that the people of this nation do not, in their hearts, want to destroy our lives, our families, and our communities," Arellano said.

Her public defiance has drawn attention to the situation of illegal immigrants whose children are American citizens, but she has also drawn criticism from many who say she exploits her son by having him speak at news conferences.

"If this government would separate me from my son, let them do it in front of the men and women who have the responsibility to fix this broken law and uphold the principles of human dignity," Arellano said Wednesday, reading in English from a prepared statement.

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