The New York meeting was the latest such event in the 12-city national speaking tour undertaken by Calero following his release from an INS jail in Houston on December 13. Organized by the Róger Calero Defense Committee, the tour has taken him to the Midwest, California, Florida, Texas, New York, and New Jersey. Calero is scheduled to travel to Washington State and Colorado for further meetings in late February.

During the discussion that followed the speakers’ presentations, Espinal said that he faces deportation by the INS after being detained by agents when returning from his native Dominican Republic. The cops held him in connection with a 14-year old conviction for which he had already served time. "It’s not fair to make someone pay again," he said. "It’s not fair to separate me from my family."

Espinal’s account paralleled Calero’s story. On December 3 the journalist was detained and jailed by INS agents at Houston’s Intercontinental Airport as he entered the United States. Calero had just completed a reporting assignment at an international conference of trade unionists in Cuba, and a student conference and book fair in Mexico.

The INS jailed Calero on the grounds of a 1988 high school conviction on a charge of selling an ounce of marijuana to an undercover cop. Calero had included this information when he had successfully applied for permanent residency in 1989. He received his green card the following year, after the INS waived the conviction, which was confirmed when he renewed it in 2000.

Ten days after Calero’s jailing, INS officials in Houston released him as protest letters poured into their office. They have set up a deportation hearing for March 25.

The February 1 meeting drew people from New Jersey and Philadelphia as well as New York. Participants in a number of campaigns against deportations, fighters against police brutality, students at local schools, and workers from factories in New York were among those attending.

"I’m honored to have Mr. Calero here," said the Rev. Earl Kooperkamp, the pastor at St. Mary’s, in opening the event. Calero, he said, "is a man who has stood up to tell the truth."  
 
Nonpartisan defense campaign
Pamela Vossenas, a co-chair of the Róger Calero Defense Committee, chaired the program. "Our mission is to build a nonpartisan committee," she said. "First, to make the INS pay the highest price possible for their acts against Róger Calero. Second, to stop the deportation, to defend his right to live and work in this country without fear of arrest. We are also here to set an example that it is possible to fight back."

The speakers panel included Kathy Chang of the Committee to Defend Farouk Abdel-Muhti; Margarita Rosario of Parents against Police Brutality; Ray La Forrest, an organizer in Local DC1707 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME); Jane Guskin of the Coalition for the Human Rights of Immigrants; Luis Miranda, director of Casa de las Américas; Bobby Khan of the Coney Island Avenue Project; Kathy Andrade of the Salvadoran Social and Cultural Circle; John Studer of the Róger Calero Defense Committee; and Calero himself.

The meeting gave a warm welcome to Margarita Rosario and Juanita Young, who have become leaders in the fight against police brutality following the killings of their sons by New York cops.

Rosario, the founder of Parents Against Police Brutality, described the execution-style murder of her son and nephew in 1995. "They put 14 shots into my son’s back as he lay down on the floor and 8 shots into my nephew’s back," she said.

When an independent autopsy on the bodies contradicted the police account, "I decided to fight," Rosario said.

"The U.S. government has tried to silence people of color," she said, "like Martin Luther King and [Puerto Rican independence fighter Pedro] Albisu Campos. We must take up the fight of Mr. Calero."

Kathy Chang of the Committee to Defend Farouk Abdel-Muhti read a statement from the Palestinian activist, who is threatened with deportation and is currently in the Passaic County Jail in New Jersey. "All people in my situation are on your side, and I appeal to you to go on struggling on the outside to defend those of us inside," Abdel-Muhti wrote to Calero.

The meeting also heard a letter of solidarity from Lynne Stewart, a New York attorney who has been accused of delivering messages to a so-called "terrorist" group. The charges follow her defense of Omar Abdel Rahman, the Egyptian Sheik who was railroaded to prison on frame-up charges of conspiring to blow up New York landmarks.

"Calero and I are current targets of repression. We stand and defend our cases," said Stewart. "I am proud to support him and respect his outreach to the people, to guarantee his victory."

Ray La Forrest and Jane Guskin both emphasized the importance of waging a public defense effort. "Unless we fight intelligently, unless we use all of our resources, we lose," said La Forrest.  
 
Thousands in similar situations
"There are many thousands of people in similar situations," said Guskin. She urged participants to keep sending protest letters to the INS. The authorities are "susceptible to pressure," she said. "It is with the public campaign, not with the legal strategy, that these cases are won."

Luis Miranda from Casa de las Américas, which defends the Cuban Revolution, described how Washington’s immigration policies are applied unequally to immigrants from Haiti and Cuba. He advocated support for the five Cuban patriots serving long sentences in U.S. jails on frame-up charges of "conspiracy" to commit espionage.

"Today Róger Calero, tomorrow anyone else," he said, urging support for the anti-deportation fight.

Bobby Khan also emphasized the widespread abuses by the INS, which rounded up hundreds of immigrants from South Asia and the Middle East following the September 11 attacks. The organization in which he is active, the Coney Island Avenue Project, is named after a neighborhood in Brooklyn--home to many Pakistanis and other immigrants--that is "under attack," he said. "More than 1,000 have been arrested, many deported."

Khan saluted Calero and others who have said "no" to such treatment. "The more they oppress us, the more energy we feel to fight back," he said. "Justice is not going to be given. We’ll have to earn it."

Kathy Andrade of the Salvadoran Social and Cultural Circle also brought her support and encouraged participants to join a February 14 protest for immigrant rights outside the Federal Building in downtown Manhattan.

The defense committee organized a collection to cover costs and contribute to the national fund-raising goal of $50,000 by the time of the INS hearing on March 25. Committee coordinator John Studer gave the fund pitch.

"Like many others," Studer said, "Róger was snared for a past offense, as the INS has poured the names and records of millions of immigrants, residents, and citizens into its database." It has done this, he explained, under retroactive powers granted it under the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. The law expanded the list of offenses considered grounds for deportation and directs the INS to expel immigrants convicted of crimes, even if they are legal residents of the United States.

Calero has an advantage over many others caught in the net, said Studer. "He has political comrades and has won respect in the labor movement, including as a meat packer in Des Moines, Iowa, and St. Paul, Minnesota, where he was involved in a successful union-organizing drive at the Dakota Premium plant.

"A lot of people see themselves in this fight," Studer said.

Through donations at the door, the collection, and further contributions at the lively social that followed the meeting, more than $2,800 was raised.

Another volunteer with the committee, Nyssa Chow, a student at Sarah Lawrence College, introduced Calero. "I am from Trinidad," she said, "but I have not joined this fight because I am an immigrant. I have not joined because of my race, my gender, my political or religious affiliation. And not because I could be next. I am a part of this struggle because my conscience will not allow otherwise."

Calero reviewed the facts of his case and then encouraged those present to get involved in this and other struggles. "As such abuses get exposed," he said, "more and more people will step forward as we see it’s possible to push the government and their cops back."

The INS use of a prior conviction rings "alarm bells among many who have had contact with the ‘justice’ system," Calero said. "Many object to the idea that you can be made to pay twice for the same conviction."

In the discussion, Maximo Espinal was not the only participant who saw the meeting as an opportunity to speak out about their treatment at the hands of the INS.

Omar Arango, who lives in Elizabeth, New Jersey, told the meeting that he faces a final deportation hearing in June. A truck driver and U.S. resident for 22 years, Arango is threatened under the same 1996 law. He attended the meeting with his wife and three children. "We knew that there are organizations working on cases like ours but didn’t know how to contact them," said Sandra Roldan-Arango.

Both Arango and Espinal found out about the meeting through reading an interview with Calero run in Hoy, a Spanish-language daily published in New York (see article on page 6.) The article included details of the February 1 event.

Speaking of those who gave personal testimony at the meeting, Calero said in his concluding remarks, "We need to bring together as much support as possible. When these deportation hearings happen, we don’t have to go alone."

Among the other participants were a number of young people learning about the case for the first time. Nina Siulc, a student at New York University, filmed the event. She is studying the experiences of the many U.S. residents who have been deported to the Dominican Republic under the 1996 law.  
 
Meeting ‘covered a lot of ground’
Brian Goulbourne said he thought the meeting "was well-organized and covered a lot of ground." Goulbourne works at a warehouse in the Brooklyn meat market. He learned about the Calero case from a co-worker at a previous job who had introduced him to the Militant newspaper.

Fanny Mera, a sewing machine operator at a Queens garment shop, said that she had been invited to the meeting by friends at work. She was especially interested because a nephew of hers had been arrested and deported back to Ecuador, while his wife and children remain in the United States.

Aarti Shahani and Subash Kateel, the founders of "Families for Freedom," a group that defends people facing deportation, also attended. The organization seeks to "bring everyone together," said Shahani, without "distinctions between those with or without a green card, asylum seekers, those with criminal convictions or of different nationalities."

In the lead-up to Calero’s arrival in New York, defense committee supporters visited the offices of the Workplace Project in Hempstead, Long Island, an organization that defends day laborers and other immigrant workers in the area. That group endorsed the defense campaign after hearing a presentation by Sarah Katz, a volunteer with the defense campaign who is Calero’s wife.

They also invited Calero to speak to their membership--an invitation that he took up on January 29. On Long Island Calero was received by Patrick Young of the Central American Resource Center, who handed him a copy of a protest letter the organization had written to Hipolito Acosta, the INS district director in Houston.

During his trip to Long Island, Calero was interviewed by several local newspapers. In Newark, New Jersey, where he lives, Calero was interviewed by a veteran staff member of WBGO radio, a well-known jazz station. He will speak at a public meeting held at Casa de Don Pedro in north Newark on February 9.

Candace Wagner is a garment worker in Queens, New York. Romina Green, a garment worker and member of UNITE contributed to this article.