On May 22 Immigration Judge William Strasser signed a final order ending the government’s moves to deport Calero, associate editor of Perspectiva Mundial and staff writer for the Militant newspaper. The order reads: “Reason for termination: Respondent is not deportable.”

Calero spoke on his success in beating back the efforts of the immigration police to exclude him from the United States, as part of a public meeting here at Hunter College titled “Europe and America: To the Victor Go the Spoils; Appearance and Reality of World Politics.”

“I invite you to celebrate with all those across the country that see my victory as one for all workers—a victory for our class,” said Calero. “It is in this spirit that we are launching a victory tour.”

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had filed a one-sentence motion before Strasser in Newark, New Jersey, on May 1 to “terminate the instant Removal Proceedings predicated on the Notice to Appear dated December 3, 2002, issued in Houston, Texas.” The DHS motion was based on two sections of the government’s immigration regulations: “The notice to appear was improvidently issued,” and “Circumstances of the case have changed after the notice was issued to such an extent that continuation is no longer in the best interest of the government.”

What had changed since the immigration police detained Calero was his successful campaign to win broad support for his fight to stop the government’s efforts to deport him. In this six-month fight Calero won a wide hearing from defenders of freedom of the press, supporters of the rights of immigrants, and others opposed to government attacks on workers’ rights.

Unions—from the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 789 in St. Paul, Minnesota; to District 1199J of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees in Newark; to the National Union of Journalists in Britain—came to his defense, sending letters to demand the charges be dropped, inviting him to speak, and making financial contributions.

Calero will begin his victory tour in Houston, where he was originally detained in December of last year by immigration agents, now organized under the Department of Homeland Security, said John Studer, coordinator of the Róger Calero Defense Committee, at the June 7 meeting.

From Houston, Calero will tour cities in the Midwest, where he won broad backing from meat packers and other trade unionists. Before joining the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial staff, Calero worked as a packinghouse worker in both Iowa and Minnesota. He was part of a groundbreaking union organizing drive that won the union at Dakota Premium, a packinghouse where he worked in South St. Paul, Minnesota.

UFCW Local 789, which now represents workers at Dakota Premium, took up the fight from the beginning. Local president Bill Pearson signed on as one of the national co-chairs of the defense committee and the local organized a fund-raiser at the union hall that brought in over $2,000. Since then, many more checks from other union members have been sent to the defense committee through the ongoing work of UFCW Local 789 in support of the defense campaign, Studer said.

Calero said that his tour will offer a political example of how to organize an effective fight at a time when “Attorney General John Ashcroft is justifying the conduct and methods used in the arrest and deportation of thousands of immigrants, which are strengthened by the Supreme Court decision to continue allowing secret deportation hearings, and while the U.S. government is preparing to execute prisoners held without charges at the U.S. prison camp at Guantánamo—on territory Washington occupies against the will of the Cuban people. But they can’t hide the outrage provoked by the death of dozens of immigrant workers at the U.S.-Mexico border as they attempt to cross it into this country.”

Calero was seized, upon returning from a reporting trip to Latin America, at Houston Intercontinental Airport in December 2002 by immigration agents. Like thousands of others, he was thrown into detention and told he was to be “excluded” from the United States. The government based this decision on a 1988 conviction Calero had on his record for selling an ounce of marijuana to an undercover cop while he was in high school. The Immigration Service was fully informed of this conviction when he applied to be a permanent resident in 1989. They waived the record of this petty offense and granted him a green card in 1990, and renewed his permanent residency status 10 years later.

At the June 7 program here Calero said his tour will “seal the victory” achieved in his case by helping to make his successful campaign the property of others in struggle. He pointed in particular to the ongoing fights against the immigration police by Farouk Abdel-Muhti, Sami Al-Arian, and Omar Jamal, and expressed support for five Cuban revolutionaries framed up and imprisoned in U.S. jails.

Following the Midwest tour stops, Calero will head to several West Coast cities. Then, in early July, Calero will return to the East Coast for engagements in New York and Newark, New Jersey, before attending the Socialist Workers Party’s July 10-12 Active Workers Conference in Oberlin, Ohio. Following that conference, Calero will take his tour to the NAACP Convention in Miami, Florida.

In a June 5 letter to supporters of the Róger Calero Defense Committee, John Studer wrote, “for the rest of July and August, Calero will complete his tour around the country. Calero will finish his victory tour by traveling to speak before supporters in Europe. Successfully reentering the country will complete Calero’s tour and consolidate his victory.”