We urge you to join the campaign to demand that the Immigration and Naturalization Service immediately free Róger Calero and stop exclusion proceedings against him. On December 3 Calero, a Militant staff writer and associate editor of the Spanish-language magazine Perspectiva Mundial, was seized by the INS at the Houston airport as he was returning from a reporting assignment in Latin America. He was detained at the airport by the immigration cops for several hours, not allowed to contact his attorney during that time, and then thrown into a privately run immigration jail nearby. He now faces exclusion from the United States.

This is an attack on his right to live and work as a journalist in this country--and an attack on the basic rights of all.

When he was arrested, Calero was traveling back from Guadalajara, Mexico, where he reported on an international student conference and the largest annual book fair in Latin America. A few days earlier he had covered a conference held in Havana, Cuba, on the Free Trade Area of the Americas. He filed articles from these events that have been published in our newspaper. Calero has taken several reporting assignments in Latin America over the past two years--in addition to his range of coverage of U.S. and world events.

Now the INS has thrown one of our reporters and editors in prison. As the associate editor of Perspectiva Mundial, he is one of two staff members for the Spanish-language magazine. The arrest is a disruption of the ability to produce these two publications. Despite the severe restrictions imposed by the jailers, Calero continues to write from behind prison walls, as you can see from the report he filed for this issue--telling the story of fellow workers who face a similar denial of their rights by the U.S. government.

Calero has been a permanent resident of the United States for the past 12 years. The INS is now seeking to revoke his status and keep him out of this country, where he works, lives, and has his immediate family. They are trying to exclude him on the basis of a 1988 conviction, when he was a high school student in Los Angeles, of selling marijuana to an undercover cop on a sting operation. Threatened with jail, he copped a plea and received a suspended 60-day sentence with three years’ probation, and paid a $50 fine. That is not exactly the picture of a "trafficker" that the INS today is trying to convey. In fact, in 1990 the INS itself granted him a green card, waiving the conviction, which was explicitly documented in his application.

Hundreds of thousands of people like Róger Calero have been caught in the nets of the INS, especially as the U.S. government has accelerated its assault on the rights of working people. The U.S. rulers have tripled the size of the INS, making it the largest federal police force, and have stepped up factory raids as well as random stops on highways both near the Mexican and Canadian borders. They have stepped up factory raids and moved to deny immigrants in many states the right to drivers’ licenses. With the accumulation of antidemocratic legislation over the past decade, from the 1996 immigration law to the 2001 USA Patriot Act, the government has sought to curtail the right to due process, protection against arbitrary search and seizure, and other constitutional guarantees. This is the brutal face of American "justice" for increasing numbers of workers.

The staffs of the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial have launched a campaign to win Róger Calero’s freedom, to allow him to rejoin our staff and continue helping to provide readers with the coverage of labor and political struggles that contributes to understanding what is happening in the world today.

We ask you to join in this effort. Send a letter to the INS district director in Houston urging that Calero be released now and their moves to exclude him be dropped. Circulate petitions to introduce this fight for justice to your co-workers, friends, and associates. Help raise crucially needed funds to cover the legal expenses and costs of informational literature for mounting this campaign.

Write to Calero to tell him you are part of his fight and to let him know about other struggles for justice you are involved in. Write to Róger Calero, 804B, File #A27 960 195, Houston Processing Center, 15850 Export Plaza Drive, Houston, TX 77030.

Help distribute the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial --both to tell the truth and win more support for the fight to free Calero, and to present the whole breadth of news and working-class perspectives that these two publications offer.

In solidarity,
Martín Koppel
Editor
 
 
Related articles:
Staffs of ‘Perspectiva Mundial’ and the ‘Militant’ fight INS effort to exclude editor
UFCW official: ‘A travesty of justice’
Inside an INS jail in Houston
Facts on INS detention of Róger Calero and the fight to free him
Many immigrants face denial of rights like Calero
How you can help  
 
 
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