The committee, which was initiated by the Political Rights Defense Fund (PRDF), has also announced a drive to raise $50,000 in funds for the defense campaign by the end of January. "These funds are needed to meet legal fees and other expenses, which are rapidly adding up," said PRDF director John Studer in a December 21 interview from the Manhattan offices of the defense committee.

Calero will begin his tour with speaking engagements in Minnesota’s Twin Cities. He will be addressing the broadest possible audiences, including unionists, working journalists, fighters for immigrant rights, and others.

The defense committee has been organized in the expectation that the fight will be a hard-fought one. "We are locked in a toe-to-toe battle with the government over Calero’s right to live and work in this country, and over rights that are important to all, native-born and immigrant alike," Studer said.

"There is no reason for us to think they knew who they had in their jail when they first arrested Calero, but with the support that was immediately organized, they quickly knew they were in for a fight."  
 
Arrested during reporting assignment
The 12-year permanent resident was arrested by Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) agents as he returned from a reporting assignment abroad.

During his two weeks outside the country, Calero first covered an international conference, held in Havana, Cuba, on the economic crisis in Latin America and the Caribbean. He then reported on two events in Guadalajara, Mexico. One was the annual international book fair, the largest in Latin America. The other was a Latin American and Caribbean student conference. On December 3, on his return from Guadalajara, he was arrested at Houston Intercontinental Airport by INS agents and locked up in an immigration jail.

Letters of protest calling for Calero’s release started to pour in after his two newspapers appealed for support. On December 13 District Director Hipolito Acosta paroled him on his own recognizance.

The exclusion hearing originally scheduled for December 17 inside the jail will be rescheduled before an immigration judge in Houston, Studer said.

In charges presented to Calero, INS officials assert that he cannot be admitted into the United States because he was convicted in 1988 on charges of selling an ounce of marijuana to an undercover cop when he was in high school. They claim they can do this even though the INS itself waived this conviction in 1990 when it granted Calero permanent residence status, and then renewed his green card 10 years later.  
 
Case has struck a chord
"I have found that my case strikes a chord with a lot of people," Calero told the Militant. "There are thousands and thousands of immigrant workers who are being picked up by the INS as they return from visits abroad.

"The INS has poured data from federal and state criminal records into its computer system, and many people are being flagged for minor charges on their record from years or decades ago, including permanent residents."

"Everyone knows someone who went through what I went through as a youth," Calero said, referring to the 1988 conviction cited by the INS, as it continues to retroactively apply the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. The act expanded the list of offenses that would be grounds for deportation.

"The fact that I was arrested as I was carrying out my reporting work has also outraged a lot of people who see this as an attack on my right to live and work as a journalist in this country, and an attack on others in the same situation.

"That’s why many are itching for a fight that opposes these attacks," said Calero.

"Now is the time to broaden the campaign to demand the INS drop its exclusion proceedings against me," he said. "My parole doesn’t change the fact that I face deportation."

Faced with a flood of protest letters and petitions, INS officials "made a calculated decision to release me," he said. "It was a maneuver to deflect the pressure."

Among the most recent protest messages to the INS is one from Jeremy Dear, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists in the United Kingdom (see page 12 for excerpts of messages).

Julian Petley, chair of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, also in Britain, sent a letter that emphasized the issues of reporters’ rights and freedom of the press that are bound up in the case.

Don Seaquist, secretary-treasurer of UFCW Local 789, in St. Paul, Minnesota, noted that in 2000, when Calero worked at the Dakota Premium meatpacking plant in St. Paul, he had "continually stood tall defending the right of employees to organize a union." Deporting him, he wrote, will "fan the flames of injustice and bring to light another in a long series of improper actions on the part of the federal government, all in the name of antiterrorism."

Fernando González Llort, one of the five Cuban revolutionaries framed up and jailed by the U.S. government on conspiracy charges, demanded that INS officials stop their efforts to deport Calero and "restore all his rights as a permanent resident of this country."

Other new backers of the defense campaign include immigrant rights supporters and representatives of religious organizations.  
 
Newspapers report case
In Athens, Greece, defenders of Calero’s rights translated material from the defense committee. They also forwarded a news brief on the case that was published in the December 18 issue of Eleftherotypia, the largest-circulation daily in that country.

Journalist Jesús López Tapia reported Calero’s release in the December 15 El Día, the Spanish-language daily in Houston, following up his earlier coverage on Calero’s detention. López quoted Martha Olvera, director of the Coalition for Dignity and Amnesty in Houston, who described the release as a "victory."

Calero’s case has been publicized on the web sites of the News Media Update; the Weekly News Update on the Americas, published by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York; and Free Speech Radio News.

Supporters of Calero’s case are continuing to write letters of protest to the INS and involving others in the fight. The latest materials from the defense committee are available at the Militant’s web site, www.themilitant.com.

"We shouldn’t miss a beat at every opportunity to raise funds," Studer emphasized. Supporters of the defense campaign are organizing phone calling to win donations, request honoraria for speaking engagements, and take up collections at political and union events.

Calero was recently invited to a house meeting organized by Juan, a Newark resident who is originally from Ecuador. "I set up a meeting, invited people I know, and six people attended," he reported.