On Dec. 3, 2002, Calero, an associate editor of Perspectiva Mundial and staff writer for the Militant, was arrested by immigration agents when he arrived at Houston Intercontinental Airport on his way back home from a reporting trip to Cuba and Mexico. He was thrown in an immigration jail where he was held for 10 days until an international campaign of protest won his release. While Calero was locked up in Houston, the government began deportation proceedings against him, using a conviction, which Calero received while in high school in 1988, for selling an ounce of marijuana to an undercover cop. The immigration service was fully aware of this conviction and waived it when it granted Calero permanent residency in 1990.

Since last December, Calero remained under the threat of deportation until the government moved to drop its case against him in early May, saying that circumstances had changed since his arrest and it was no longer in Washington’s interest to pursue deportation. Calero has pointed out at recent public meetings that what changed in the ensuing five months was the swelling of public support for his fight against the government’s efforts to deport him. On May 22, an immigration judge in Newark, New Jersey, where Calero lives, ruled that he cannot be deported, formally closing the case.

Houston is the first stop on an international victory tour to celebrate the May 22 decision that Calero is “non deportable.”

Martha Olvera, one of the first in Houston to publicize Calero’s case while he was still in the immigration jail, explained why she thought the victory tour was important: “There are many people like Calero, caught up by the immigration laws. But they don’t act like Calero. They hire a lawyer and wait for results. And they are deported. Calero was different. From the beginning, even when he was in the detention center, he was organizing. He moved! He went everywhere, speaking out. We need to let people know what he did so that they can win too.”

The group made plans for the two-day visit. They wrote and printed leaflets in Spanish and English for the victory meeting Thursday, June 19, at the Resurrection Church in the Denver Harbor area of Houston. They decided to hold a press conference the day before to publicize the victory and the meeting. One committee activist offered his home for a barbecue. Following the meeting, several of the participants took the Calero flyer to a meeting of over 100 trade unionists and immigrant rights organizers who were launching the Texas leg of the “Immigrant Rights Freedom Ride,” scheduled to leave Houston for Washington, D.C., in September. The Calero victory was warmly received at the gathering. Two reporters asked to be first in line to interview Calero.