The Militant - March 10, 2003 -- Rallying Immigrants Over Rights: Facing deportation, reporter speaks out to educate public

Vol. 67/No. 7 March 10, 2003

Rallying Immigrants Over Rights:
Facing deportation, reporter
speaks out to educate public

Newsday, Feb. 9, 2003
BY MAE M. CHENG
STAFF WRITER
Róger Calero of Newark, N.J., a reporter and editor for socialist publications, is used to disseminating information through the written word. But now, facing deportation, Calero has launched a passionate, personal 10-city speaking tour, trying to rally immigrants into action on his behalf and their own.

Calero, 33, a permanent resident of the United States for 12 years, was detained by immigration officials in Houston last month when he returned from a reporting trip to Cuba and Mexico. Calero had a marijuana sales conviction from 1988, when he was a high school senior in Los Angeles, an offense that makes him deportable. Immigration and Naturalization Service officials jailed him and are now looking to send him back to his native Nicaragua.

Calero, who has reported on a variety of issues from the labor movement to politics, was unaware that current immigration laws make him deportable from the United States because of his prior, one-time conviction, for which he received a suspended 60-day sentence and three years probation. But since his release from INS detention Dec. 10, he has waged a quick and furious campaign not only to learn about immigration law but also to make immigrants around the country aware of laws and policies that could have a negative impact on them.

"This is something a lot of people don't know about," said Calero, who is the associate editor of "Perspectiva Mundial," a Spanish-language monthly news magazine, and a staff writer for the "Militant," a socialist news weekly, both published in Manhattan.

"My case is not an isolated one," Calero said. "We live and work in this country and we have rights. . . . It is a fact that we have only one choice, which is to continue to fight back."

Luisa Aquino, an INS spokeswoman in Houston, would not comment on Calero's case, citing privacy concerns. Calero's next court date there is March 25.

Since Christmas, Calero has traveled to cities like San Francisco, Omaha and Tampa, and has spoken at public gatherings to thousands of immigrants, trade union members and civil rights advocates, urging them to support his case and to fight to gain more rights for noncitizens. His last stop on this tour is the New York metropolitan area. He handed out leaflets in Hempstead and spoke at St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Manhattan earlier this month.

While he was detained at an INS jail in Texas for 10 days, Calero interviewed immigrants from Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico who also found themselves facing deportation due to a prior minor conviction. Their stories were later published in the "Militant."

"People are often astonished how far the immigration laws reach in terms of criminal records," said Manny Vargas, director of the Immigrant Defense Project with the New York State Defenders Association based in Manhattan. "The assumption from the public is that it's only hardcore criminals being deported."

While Calero and his new wife, Sarah Katz, 30, have considered that he might be forced to return to Nicaragua - the country he left in 1985 - the couple remains optimistic that they will win the deportation case.

"This is a fight to win, to stay," Calero said.