On December 3, Róger Calero, a Nicaraguan journalist, and associate editor of Perspectiva Mundial, who has been a permanent resident for 12 years, was returning home from covering the International Conference of Students in Guadalajara, Mexico, and other assignments in Cuba, when he was arrested by agents of the Immigration Service at the Houston airport. The reason was a minor offense that he had committed in 1988, when he attempted at his school to sell an ounce of marijuana to an undercover agent....

Supported by several immigrant rights organizations, Róger Calero has initiated a national campaign to challenge the laws with which he is being judged anew, and prevent his deportation and that of thousands of other immigrants.

After drastic changes from the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, and Illegal Immigration and Immigrant Responsibilities Act, passed by the Clinton administration in 1996, there have been record numbers of detentions of immigrants. These laws basically established new conditions for the detention of certain categories of immigrants, including permanent residents, undocumented immigrants, or those with asylum.

For cases like Calero’s, previously the charges for which one would have to pay with deportation were limited to major crimes such as murder and rape. After the reforms made in the laws, any charge that carries a sentence of more than one year, like theft, fraud, or repeated driving under the influence of alcohol, mandate deportation.

Without taking into account that these laws are retroactive, legislators from the Department of Justice broadened the list of charges for which an immigrant, resident or without papers, could be deported, independent of whether the violation had been committed much before or after 1996.

Human Rights Watch stated in a 1998 report that the number of people detained by the INS had grown 80 percent in comparison to the figures for the three previous years. This same organization states that the jails and detention centers have problems accommodating the always growing number of detainees, and that access to legal representation and judicial review is very limited. "When you enter the jail you realize that these are the same people you worked with in the factories, in the garment shops, they are workers, many of them are held for months, facing the threat of deportation."
 
 
Related article:
North Carolina: Calero wins support for fight against deportation  
 
 
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