Studer and Calero led a delegation that day to deliver these letters and petitions to Demetrios Georgakopoulos, Newark district director of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (BICE)--the reorganized Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). The group included Pamela Vossenas, national grievance officer of the National Writers Union, and Moses Williams, a delegate in the Hospital Workers Union Local 1199J.
Calero recently won a victory transferring his case from Houston, Texas, to Newark, where he lives. A new hearing on the immigration authority’s move to deport him has been set for September 10. Withthe transfer of Calero’s case, his supporters wanted to make sure immigration officials have copies of all the letters and petitions demanding the deportation case be dropped. These include all the materials earlier submitted to the INS office in Houston.
As Calero and his supporters made their way through the building, immigration agents stopped and stared at the delegation. First one supervisor, then another, told Calero and Studer that they would not accept hand delivery of the papers. Finally, the delegation went to the post office across the street and mailed the documents.
"They want to discourage and intimidate people from fighting back for their rights," Vossenas, one of the national co-chairs of the defense committee, said after the delegation returned.
"They know we were here," Studer told supporters. "They are on notice that this is a public, political fight, and that is what we were out to accomplish."
Calero then led supporters to a picket line in front of the Bloomfield Police Department to protest the killing of Santiago Villanueva by Bloomfield cops a year ago that day. Villanueva, a garment worker, was strangled to death by the cops while he was having an epileptic seizure. The day before the protest, four of the five cops involved in the killing had been indicted on manslaughter charges for his death. Villanueva’s family is demanding the cops be suspended and indicted for first-degree murder.
Because of the indictments, the picket received substantial media coverage.
Later that evening, 22 people attended a public meeting at La Casa de Don Pedro, a community center in north Newark, to hear Studer and Calero give updates on the defense efforts and where the attacks on immigrant workers fits in the world today.
Studer explained that Washington’s policies to restrict workers’ rights at home are part of the rulers’ response to a deepening economic crisis of their system and the opening of a round of wars abroad. "The rulers attack peoples’ rights where they are weakest, in the hope to divide workers," Studer said. "Among any workers who are fighting, we find this case gets a good hearing."
"What do we see happening in Iraq?" Calero asked in his remarks. "Occupation troops shooting down protesters--a mirror image of what they will carry out against working people here. This war had nothing to do with democracy or freedom for the Iraqi people."
Calero also spoke about the resistance by workers in the United States in defense of their rights and living conditions. He pointed to the case of Omar Jamal (see article above). "Jamal’s arrest came on the heels of a victory of the Somali community in winning a suspension of the deportations of immigrant workers from Somalia," he stated. "It’s obvious that this is an attempt to undermine their victory."
Sharin Chiorazzo, a member of the Committee to Free Farouk Abdel-Muhti, attended the meeting and encouraged everyone to attend a picket line April 25. This marks the one-year anniversary of the detention of the Palestinian activist by the immigration police.
Calero, 34, is an associate editor of Perspectiva Mundial, a Spanish-language monthly magazine published in New York, and a Militant staff writer. On December 3, he was returning from reporting trips to Cuba and Mexico. INS agents seized Calero at Houston Intercontinental Airport, told him he was denied entry into the U.S., and carted him off to an immigration jail. He was released 10 days later, after scores of people poured messages of protest into the Houston INS office.
Immigration officials began deportation proceedings against Calero based on a 1988 plea-bargain conviction, when he was a high school student in Los Angeles. Calero had been accused by the police of selling an ounce of marijuana to an undercover cop. The INS waived this conviction twice, in granting Calero permanent residency in 1990 and then in renewing it 10 years later.
In recent weeks, supporters of the Róger Calero Defense Committee here spoke and staffed Calero defense literature tables at a meeting of delegates of the Hospital Workers Union Local 1199J, a conference on workers’ rights organized by the Industrial Union Council of the state AFL-CIO, a gathering of the Bergen County Ethical Culture Society, and a meeting of the Black Telephone Workers for Justice.
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For more information or to send a contribution:
Róger Calero Defense Committee, c/o PRDF, Box 761, Church St. Station, New York, NY 10007; phone/ fax, (212)563-0585. On the web: www.calerodefense.org Send messages demanding exclusion moves against Calero be dropped to: Demetrios Georgakopolous, Director, Bureau of Customs and Immigration Enforcement. Fax messages to: (973) 645-3074; or mail to: 970 Broad St., Newark, NJ 07102. Copies should be sent to the Róger Calero Defense Committee. |