BY BRIANNA BLAKE  
After winning a six-month battle against U.S. government efforts to deport him, journalist Roger Calero returned to Perry on Wednesday to speak to immigrant workers about confronting unjust deportation.

“We set a precedent that deportation is not automatic, that you can fight against it and win,” said Calero, a reporter and editor for Socialist publications Perspectiva Mundial and the Militant.

His target audience is undocumented immigrants in Iowa who often avoid detection unless arrested. An arrest often guarantees deportation, as Karina Ventura, 18, learned in April.

The Des Moines Lincoln High School student faces deportation because she went to Hoover High School to pick up a friend and was arrested for trespassing by a school police officer. The officer discovered that Ventura had been banned from the campus for a previous incident.

Calero, 34, worked as a meat packer in Perry in 1999 and 2000 and now lives in New Jersey. He was detained for 10 days last December by immigration agents in Houston when he returned to the country from reporting assignments in Latin America.

He was detained when officials noticed that although he has been a U.S. resident for 12 years, Calero was not a citizen. Officials threatened him with deportation to his native Nicaragua because of a 1988 marijuana sales conviction, when he was a high school student in Los Angeles.

Calero’s magazine launched a public campaign against his deportation. After being released from detention, Calero began a national speaking tour gaining support to put pressure on the government to drop his case. On May 22, Immigration Judge William Strasser issued the order saying Calero was not deportable.

“They wanted me to pay twice for the same conviction,” Calero said. “From the beginning, I have heard from many others who are caught up in the immigration system, fighting to remain here and defend their rights. I want to make the gains of this fight the property of thousands of others who face attack from the government.”

Calero called his case an important victory for workers’ rights. He is traveling and speaking before unions, immigrant rights groups, and rallies of supporters across the country and internationally.
 
 
Related article:
‘Fight to win!’ campaign against deportations spreads through Midwest  
 
 
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