The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which now implements immigration law in place of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), returned the green card and passport to Calero less than 24 hours after his attorney, Claudia Slovinsky, requested they be turned over.
“This marks another step in cementing the victory registered when the government moved to terminate efforts to exclude him,” wrote John Studer, coordinator of the Róger Calero Defense Committee, in a May 15 letter to the committee’s supporters.
The government handed over the documents two weeks after conceding an important victory to Calero. At that time, the DHS informed him it was petitioning the immigration court to “terminate the instant Removal Proceedings predicated on the Notice to Appear dated December, 2002.” The DHS quoted sections from immigration regulations as the basis for its decision, stating the “removal” notice had been “improvidently” issued. Furthermore, it said, “circumstances” of the case had changed since December of last year, making continued efforts to deport Calero “no longer in the best interest of the government.”
The government’s moves followed a six-month campaign by Calero and growing numbers of supporters. On Dec. 3, 2002, the staff writer for the Militant and editor of the Spanish-language monthly Perspectiva Mundial had been detained by immigration agents at Houston Intercontinental Airport on his return home from a reporting trip to Cuba and Mexico. Immigration cops locked him up in an INS prison and initiated moves to deport him.
Calero, 34, has lived in the United States since 1985, when his family moved here from Nicaragua. He has been a permanent resident since 1990. In filing an application for residency in 1989, he specifically included information about his plea-bargain conviction in high school on charges of selling an ounce of marijuana to an undercover cop. Immigration officials waived this conviction in granting him a green card, giving him the right to live and work in the United States. A decade later, INS officials again waived the conviction in renewing Calero’s status.
The INS released Calero from its Houston prison 10 days after jailing him, having received scores of letters demanding that he be freed.
Backed by a newly formed defense committee, Calero hit the road on a nationwide tour to speak out about his case and lend his support to other working-class struggles in the United States.
Resistance to government attacks
Calero’s tour coincided with other resistance to increased government attacks on immigrant rights—attacks that included the special registration of individuals from 20 Mideast and Asian countries, and stepped-up deportations of immigrant workers for convictions on petty criminal charges.
The victory registered in the government’s announcement that it wants to drop the case against Calero has been applauded by a number of supporters of working-class and immigrant rights. Sharon Chiorazzo of the Committee for the Release of Farouk Abdel-Muhti wrote, “We should have a victory celebration! Unfortunately we don’t have such good news for our brother Farouk, who continues to be held in York County Prison in solitary confinement 23 hours a day. But this news is heartening for everyone’s fight, and an inspiration to keep going!”
Abdel-Muhti, a Palestinian activist in New York, has been imprisoned without charges and under threat of deportation since April of last year.
Ed Hernandez, the director of youth and family services at Newark’s La Casa de San Pedro, where Calero spoke in March, wrote May 7, “I am truly impressed and take my hat off to you for a job well done. It is wonderful to see brothers and sisters still working together to protect each other from injustice. Congratulations!”
On May 5 Newark immigration judge William Strasser instructed Assistant District Counsel Alan Wolf of the Department of Homeland Security to provide “additional explanation” for its May 1 motion terminating the deportation proceedings.
One week later Wolf responded with a four-page Supplemental Motion to Terminate. The document argues that the INS had been legally entitled to waive Calero’s conviction in granting him a permanent resident green card in 1990. There was no reason to begin the deportation proceedings in the first place, it says, and the case should be dropped.
At bottom the May 1 DHS motion presents “political reasons for why the government decided to end the fight,” wrote John Studer in the May 15 letter to supporters of Calero’s fight. “Because Calero fought and fought well,” he added, “continuing the effort to expel him became the wrong fight at the wrong time.
“Calero and his supporters look forward to launching his victory tour,” Studer wrote. “Ongoing developments will be posted on the Róger Calero Defense Committee web site, www.calerodefense.org”.
Róger Calero told the Militant that “the government wants to put this case behind it, and the defense committee also wants to resolve it. Supporters around the country have started telling me of their plans to get out the word about this victory and how it is possible to fight and defeat the government in its anti-immigrant campaign.”
Calero backs Olvera fight
(front page)
Printed below is a letter Róger Calero sent May 14 to Martha Olvera, sister-in-law of Serafín Olvera and a member of the Serafín Olvera Justice Committee in Houston, Texas (see link to article below).
Dear Martha,
Even though I am unable to be there with you as the trial for the murder of your brother-in-law by the Immigration and Naturalization Service begins, I want to add my support to the fight for justice in the case of Serafín Olvera Carrera and his surviving family.
I also want to add my voice to protest the outrageous move by the defense and the court to exclude from the jury the fact that Serafín died as a result of the injuries from the beating at the hands of the INS cops now on trial. This is one more in a series of violations of Serafín’s rights, and a shameless effort to obstruct the fight for justice in his case. One more proof that we can not depend on the courts alone in order to get justice.
In the name of “fighting terrorism” the U.S. government continues to strengthen the hand of the immigration police. Hundreds of thousands of workers have faced victimization by the hated migra, frame-ups, or other attacks by the police. At the same time that they stepped up the terror raids in workplaces and working-class communities, they carry out with impunity the death penalty, whether at the border or in the streets in cities across the country.
Struggles like yours, and the recent victory in the defense campaign against my deportation, serve as an example to other fighting workers and youth that it is possible to stand up to the bosses and their cops.
It’s an honor to stand side by side with you and others that refuse to be silenced in the face of injustice, and urge you to continue fighting in defense of workers’ rights.
Fraternally,
Róger Calero
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How to Help
For more information on the final stretch of the campaign to stop the deportation of Róger Calero, and to send a contribution, please contact: Róger Calero Defense Committee c/o PRDF |