The meeting was called after Calero, arrested December 3 by the immigration police at the Houston airport on his return from a reporting assignment in Mexico and Cuba, was paroled by the district director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) in Houston after the latter received a flood of protest messages.

Calero, a 12-year permanent resident, faces exclusion proceedings in an INS court.

"I want to thank all those who have taken part in the campaign to have me released so I can carry on that fight more effectively," said Calero in his presentation.

In one way or another, from writing and gathering protest letters and petition forms to contributing financially, the majority of those present had been part of the emergency effort to have Calero released, and planned to support ongoing efforts to defeat the deportation move by the INS.

The campaign to defend Calero’s right to live and work as a journalist in this country has been promoted and supported by a broad array of individuals and organizations, from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, to former co-workers of Calero’s at a meat-packing plant in St. Paul, Minnesota, to defenders of the rights of immigrants.

Defenders of Calero’s rights "are now locked in a toe-to-toe boxing match with the government," John Studer, the director of the Political Rights Defense Fund, told the audience. Calero and Studer were the principal speakers at the event.

"Each step we take, they try to counter," Studer said. "We must organize to respond quickly and broadly to the moves they make in their continuing campaign to throw Calero out of the country."  
 
An attack on publications
Militant and Perspectiva Mundial editor Martín Koppel opened the meeting. The federal government’s attempt to deport the journalist and editor, he said, "is an attack not only on Calero’s rights and those of others, but an attack on the ability to produce these two publications."

Calero had been thrown into the INS jail in Houston and placed under exclusion proceedings on December 3 as he returned to the United States through the Houston Intercontinental Airport. "Over the previous weeks he had been on assignment covering three important events," said Koppel--an international conference in Havana on the Free Trade Area of the Americas, and in Guadalajara, Mexico, the large annual international book fair as well as a student conference organized by the Continental Organization of Latin American and Caribbean Students.

The staffs of the two publications immediately got out the word about the arrest and initiated a campaign to get Calero out of jail and demand the exclusion proceedings against him be dropped. The fight struck a chord with others and became much broader.

Meanwhile, Koppel said, "once locked up, Róger kept doing what he has been doing for years: talking to fellow workers inside the jail, getting their stories, and accurately reporting the truth, the reality that hundreds of thousands of workers in this country face.

"We can’t predict how long this fight will last or what the final outcome will be. But one thing you can count on is that no matter what happens, no matter what country Róger is in, he will continue to be a socialist and do what he has been doing for years." Calero was elected this year to the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party as one of its youngest members.

Studer reported that the Political Rights Defense Fund is organizing broad support and fund-raising for Calero’s defense effort, and has arranged legal representation in New York and Houston (see article on PRDF on page 10).

In moving to revoke Calero’s permanent residence status and bar him from the country, Studer noted, INS agents cited a 1988 conviction. At that time Calero, a high school student, was charged with selling an ounce of marijuana to an undercover cop. "Under the threat of serving time in prison, Róger--then 18--copped a plea and received a 60-day suspended sentence, three years’ probation, and a $50 fine."  
 
‘Yes’ to green card application
The following year Calero applied for U.S. permanent residence, providing detailed information to the federal authorities about his conviction. The INS approved Calero’s application and granted his green card. "Ten years later Róger applied for the card’s renewal," said Studer. "Again they said yes."

Thousands of immigrants are in a similar position as Calero, stopped as they return from traveling abroad to visit family or for some other reason, said Studer. "In recent months the federal government has been taking local court records from across the country and pouring them into the INS computer system. An increased number of people are being jailed and deported for offenses dating back many years."

In 2001, said Studer, the INS formally removed almost 177,000 people. More than 70,000 immigrants were summarily deported for "criminal violations."

"At the same time Calero has a big advantage. He is a reporter for the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial--with colleagues determined to back him--and a longtime union and political fighter with former co-workers and fighters who are also eager to come to his defense."

Once the campaign got rolling, he said, "both his defenders on one side and the government on the other began learning how many others were itching for a fight" around the issues of journalistic freedom and immigrant rights.  
 
Response among journalists
Many reporters have felt increasing attacks on their rights, said Studer. Journalists have done jail time for refusing to reveal their sources, while the government has drawn a curtain of secrecy over court hearings for those detained since Sept. 11, 2001. One organization that has responded to the latest attack is the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which has prominently displayed Calero’s case on its web site.

Pointing to the response by immigrant rights groups, he said protest letters have been sent by the New York–based Coalition for the Human Rights of Immigrants, and supporters of Farouk Abdel-Muhti, a Palestinian activist in New York who was arrested last year.

Trade unionists and other workers who know Calero have also responded. Fifty workers at Dakota Premium Foods in South St. Paul, Minnesota--a plant where Calero worked before coming onto the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial editorial staffs, playing an active part in the groundbreaking fight to form a union there--have signed the petition so far (see accompanying article.)

United Food and Commercial Workers Local 789 president Bill Pearson was one of the first to send a message of protest to the INS, noting that "Róger was an active and committed leader" in the union fight at the Dakota Premium plant. "His co-workers saw him as a person to turn to for help," Pearson added. "So did I."

The staff at a nearby deli where Calero stops daily for coffee and sandwiches contributed $100 to the defense fund and signed protest messages.  
 
INS counterpunch
In face of the unexpected wave of protest messages, "the INS made a calculated counter-move," Studer explained. "They let Róger out. In doing so they removed the rawest aspect of the campaign--the fact that he was thrown in jail and faced a threat of immediate exclusion."

The release dealt with another thorn in their side, he said--"the fact that Róger had immediately begun interviewing fellow prisoners and reporting on conditions in the Houston INS jail."

Officials are hoping to "defuse, confuse, and slow down the defense campaign, while they press their effort to throw Róger out of the country and deal blows to his publications and the rights of all," he said.

The conditions placed on Calero’s parole, including the instruction that he abide by all federal, state, and local laws, are a warning that he is being carefully watched by federal authorities, and they can be expected to use any pretext to lock him up again.

The attempt to deport Calero on the basis of a conviction more than 10 years old cuts across a June 2001 Supreme Court decision overruling parts of the 1996 immigration law. "One part of the 1996 law said that the government could bar you from the country, even if the INS had granted you a waiver for a court conviction in your past," said Studer. "Victims of this new law fought this change, and the court ruled it unconstitutional."

Studer noted that Calero "is now available to speak and meet with those who see a common cause in his fight. If you want him to speak before your group or to your co-workers, just give us a call."

The co-chairpeople of the meeting, Naomi Craine, who is helping lead defense efforts in New York, and Paul Pederson, a member of the Young Socialists executive, read samples of protest letters sent to the INS.

Martha Olvera of Houston’s Coalition for Dignity and Amnesty sent a message to the meeting saying, "I am so happy that Róger is out from the INS jail," adding that "this is just the first step.... We cannot let them deport him."

A letter of support was also received from defenders of Calero in Auckland, New Zealand. Earlier that week partisans of the Militant at a cut-and-kill plant in that city had collected a page of signatures on a petition from co-workers, many of whose families are originally from Pacific Island countries like Samoa and the Cook Islands.  
 
Thousands face similar conditions
Calero explained that many of the nearly 500 people inside the "Houston Processing Center" are locked up because they were caught without papers, often owing to delays in processing work permit applications and other bureaucratic obstacles. The 1996 immigration law has expanded the number of offenses that immigrants can be deported for, he noted.

Many workers jailed by the INS were only too pleased to be interviewed by Calero for the socialist and labor press, said the journalist.

The processing center is run for the INS by the Corrections Corporation of America, a private company. True to its profit-making character, the jailers provide a photography service, charging $2 for Polaroid snapshots. This "crude example of capitalism at work," he said, became an opportunity for him and others to get to know each other better as they posed for a group photograph.

When Calero asked those posing for the group shot whether it was okay for the Militant and PM to use the shot. "Let it be seen," was their response, he said.

"This case will find a hearing among workers defending their unions, immigrant workers fighting for dignity, and other working people organizing resistance," said the journalist.

In the discussion period a participant from Boston said he had met a lot of interest in the defense campaign at a meeting at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst that was protesting cop harassment of a professor from Iraq. Thirty-five of the 50 participants signed the petition or gave donations, he said.

In response to a question Studer said Calero was jailed after being flagged on a computer like thousands of other workers. There is no evidence that his incarceration had anything to do with his political activity, he said. Now, of course, "they do know who he is."

Eugene Katz, the father of Sarah Katz, Calero’s wife, told the Militant after the meeting that, although he is "not a socialist," he had written a letter protesting the INS action. "This is a civil rights issue," he said. "I’m interested in learning about others who are in Róger’s position, those who have a green card and are still victimized. That to me is what’s most outrageous about this case."

Gorky, 35, an Ecuador-born worker living in the Bronx, said, "I know that what happened to Róger can happen to me." Referring to the marijuana plea-bargain conviction being used against Calero, the house painter said, "I think it’s wrong that a small mistake in your youth will be dragged out from the past and used in this way, like a cross marked on your forehead."

Anthony Roberts, who works as a cutter in a Brooklyn garment shop, expressed a similar viewpoint. "They have used a mild indiscretion against him," he said. "They do this kind of thing to put pressure on anybody who is a threat."

Participants donated $1,200 for the defense effort. Many stayed afterward to continue the discussion, lining up at the information table to get new ammunition for the ongoing campaign.