After holding him for several hours at the airport, Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) officials told him they were denying him entry to the United States and locked him up in an immigration prison. Calero, a 12-year permanent resident, now faces exclusion from this country by the INS.
Calero was on his way home from a reporting assignment in Mexico, covering an international student conference sponsored by the Continental Organization of Latin American and Caribbean Students, and the largest annual Latin American bookfair, both held simultaneously in Guadalajara. He had traveled to Mexico after reporting on a conference in Havana, Cuba, on the Free Trade Area of the Americas, attended by trade unionists and other delegates from Latin America, the United States, and Canada.
After learning of his arrest, Calero’s colleagues at Perspectiva Mundial and other supporters of his rights announced the launching of a public campaign to demand that the INS release the journalist and drop its exclusion proceedings against him.
"We are fighting this government denial of my right to work as a journalist in this country," Calero said in a phone interview from the Houston Processing Center, as the INS prison is called.
Treating the airport point of entry and the immigration prison as part of the international border, the INS is seeking to "exclude" Calero--deny him entry into the United States and deport him to Nicaragua. To do this, immigration officials aim to revoke his permanent resident status.
Calero, 33, has lived in the United States since 1985, when his family moved here from Nicaragua and he was a high school-age youth, and has been a permanent U.S. resident for the past 12 years. In addition to his position as an editor for Perspectiva Mundial, Calero works as a staff writer for the Militant, a New York-based newsweekly. As a reporter he has traveled widely, both in this country and in Latin America, covering labor and political events.
INS officials are seeking to exclude Calero on the basis of a 1988 conviction, when he was a high school student in Los Angeles, on a charge of selling marijuana to an undercover cop. Faced with the prospect of jail, Calero agreed to a plea bargain and received a suspended 60-day sentence with three years probation.
Effort to win his release on bond
The immediate goal of the campaign is to win the journalist’s release on bond. He has retained two attorneys, Martha Garza in Houston and Claudia Slovinsky in New York. Garza told Calero she expects a hearing within the next couple of weeks. At that time she will argue that he should be freed by the INS, or, if the case is continued, that he should be released on bond.
Calero has already begun to receive support from around the country. One of the first backers of his release was Bill Pearson, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 789 in South St. Paul, Minnesota. Before his current job as an editor of Perspectiva Mundial, Calero was a member of Local 789 and worked at the Dakota Premium Foods meatpacking plant, where he was part of a successful union-organizing drive. Pearson sent a letter of protest to the INS, pointing out that Calero’s "co-workers saw him as a person to turn to for help. So did I. Making him leave this country would be a travesty of justice."
"It’s great to get support from my former union president," Calero told his wife, Sarah Katz, when he heard the news.
Katz, 30, a sewing machine operator in Newark, New Jersey, reported in a phone interview from Houston that Calero was in good spirits and glad to know about the fight that has been launched to win his release from INS custody. He was also pleased to hear that the previous night, local supporters of his right to live and work in this country raised almost $600 to help cover the growing costs of the defense effort.
Katz was finally able to visit Calero on December 8, five days after his arrest. Prisoners at the INS prison in Houston--a private jail run by the Corrections Corporation of America--are allowed visitors for one hour a week on Sundays, said Katz. The visitors and detainees are all in one room with no privacy and no right to touch their loved-ones other than a hello and one goodbye kiss and one hug.
"Róger said he sleeps in a large room with about 35 others in bunk beds," Katz reported, "and the prisoners are called by their bunk number and the letter T or B to designate whether they have a top or bottom bunk." Calero is 804B.
Katz related that on the night of his detention, Calero first called her around 9:00 p.m. while being held at the airport, and that it wasn’t until some three hours after his detention that immigration officials told him he was being detained in order to begin "removal proceedings" against him on the basis of a prior conviction on his record.
"I received my last call from him that night at 4:45 a.m., when he was being ‘processed’ at the INS jail," Katz stated.
"He told me the INS confiscated his reporters’ tools, Perspectiva Mundial camera and laptop computer with photos and notes from his reporting trip."
Katz noted that earlier that day she had met in Houston with Martha Olvera, who has led an ongoing struggle for justice in the INS killing of her brother-in-law. Serafín Olvera, 48, was brutally beaten during an INS raid on a house in Bryan, Texas, in March of last year. He was denied medical treatment for several hours and died nearly a year later. Olvera was glad to meet others fighting against INS injustice and offered ideas on how to publicize Calero’s case. Katz said she was going to be interviewed by the Houston Spanish-language daily, El Día, thanks to Olvera’s assistance.
Permanent resident since 1990
An increasing number of workers who are born abroad and live and work in the United States, like Calero, have been subjected to Washington’s harassment and deportation of immigrants. The 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act allows cops from la migra to seek the exclusion of individuals at the border on the basis of previous convictions for petty offenses. The law can be applied retroactively to cases that took place before it was adopted--sometimes decades earlier (see article on immigration laws elsewhere in this issue). In addition, over the past year and a half, the harassment of immigrants has stepped up further, such as the denial of bail to immigrants branded "terrorism suspects."
Calero has been a permanent resident since 1990. When he filed his application in 1989, he specifically included the information about his conviction in high school on charges of selling marijuana to an undercover cops--which immigration officials waived in order to grant him a green card giving him the right to live and work in the United States.
At that time, several letters of support to his application for permanent residence were sent to the INS: from the Calero family’s landlord; the director of the Community Education Adolescent Alliance in Los Angeles County, where Calero had volunteered in the HIV/AIDS prevention education program; and his probation officer.
In 2000, INS officials renewed Calero’s permanent residence card, again waiving the full written record of his conviction.
For the past 12 years Calero has exercised his rights as a permanent resident, including most recently as a journalist and associate editor of the Spanish-language magazine Perspectiva Mundial and staff writer for the Militant.
Prior to working at the Spanish-language monthly, Calero worked as a meat packer at Iowa Beef Products in Perry, Iowa, and then in Minnesota, where he participated in the successful union-organizing drive at the Dakota Premium Foods plant in South St. Paul. During this time he also served as a field correspondent for Perspectiva Mundial and the Militant.
While fighting the INS attack on his right to live and work in the United States, Calero has continued his work as a journalist from behind prison walls in Texas.
Public campaign launched
Perspectiva Mundial and Militant editor Martín Koppel explained that Calero’s colleagues on the New York-based periodicals have initiated the campaign to win his release. Calero is not only the associate editor of the Spanish-language monthly but carries out many responsibilities on the Militant, from writing regular articles to business work related to the paper’s circulation and distribution.
"We produced a fact sheet and petition to distribute broadly to all those who will be outraged by the INS effort to exclude Calero and who will identify with his right to work as a journalist," said Koppel. "Supporters in cities across the country have already begun raising thousands of dollars towards what will be needed to cover legal and other expenses.
The Political Rights Defense Fund, a foundation that has backed important political rights campaigns for decades, has agreed to help raise the funds for this campaign.
"We urge as many people as possible to send a letter to the INS district office in Houston urging them to release Calero and stop their efforts to exclude him," Koppel said.
|
UFCW official: ‘A travesty of justice’ The following message was sent by Bill Pearson, president of Local 789 of the United Food and Commercial Workers union in South St. Paul, Minnesota, to the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Houston, where Róger Calero is being detained in an immigration jail, facing exclusion from the United States. Calero was a member of Local 789 before beginning his current job as associate editor of Perspectiva Mundial and a staff writer for the Militant.
My name is Bill Pearson and I am President of UFCW Local 789. We are located in South St. Paul, Minnesota, and have a membership of 8,000. Our members work in grocery stores, nursing homes, and packing houses. I am writing you for a very specific reason. It is my understanding that you have arrested Róger Calero. Apparently, there is discussion that he be deported. This would be a travesty of justice. I came to know Róger when he was working in a packing plant in South St. Paul. It was the Dakota Premium plant, and Róger was an active and committed leader in helping stabilizing the workers and bring about a labor agreement. He was bright, articulate, and well read. His co-workers saw him as a person to turn to for help. So did I. Making him leave the country would be an injustice. I implore you, do not deport him. Allow him to stay and Latino workers will be the better for it. Please feel free to contact me at 651-451-6240 for a more personal endorsement of his qualities. Sincerely, Bill Pearson |