BY ALEX ORMAZA  
For Nicaraguan journalist Róger Calero, what should have been a happy return home and the start of editing work on topics he was covering in Cuba and Mexico ended up as a nightmare with the Department of Immigration. The Department kept him in jail 12 days on the verge of deportation, all because of a minor infraction with the police that the new immigration laws placed outside the law.

“They detained me at the Houston, Texas, airport on December 3, 2002. They said that because I had told the Department of Immigration when I requested permanent residency in 1989 about my 1988 arrest for selling marijuana to an undercover cop, with the changes in the law I was now deportable,” Calero said. He had traveled to Havana and Guadalajara to report on a meeting to discuss the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas for the magazine Perspectiva Mundial. He is its associate editor. From prison, Calero contacted the editor of his magazine, who in turn mobilized the Political Rights Defense Fund to form the Róger Calero Defense Committee.  
 
One of hundreds of thousands
Since then seven months have gone by “and after massive support from trade unions and other organizations,” according to Calero, a judge declared him not deportable and he was given back his residency card. According to Lea Sherman, from the Textile Workers Union (UNITE), who supported Calero in his fight against deportation, “the case of this journalist is one of hundreds of thousands that are occurring in the United Sates but are not made public.” Sherman pointed out that many organizations in the United States and other countries have joined the campaign.

The Nicaraguan journalist told Washington Hispanic that “in a few weeks we will be taking this story to Canada, where there is a fight against deportation of Algerian refugees going on today. We want to take our message that it is possible to reverse unjust laws and have people’s civil rights respected, especially if pressure is applied with citizen solidarity.”

Before he took up journalism, Calero, who is married to a U.S. citizen, worked at meatpacking plants in Des Moines, Iowa, and St. Paul, Minnesota, where he participated in a decisive union drive at Dakota Premium Food, in South St. Paul. In the meantime, once his tour through various states of the nation is completed, Calero will visit various countries where invitations have been made to him to expose what he calls “the silent persecutions by the authorities of hundreds of thousands of immigrants in this country.”