What Happens To the Disappeared?

When Roger Calero got to customs at Houston's international airport Dec. 3, he thought long lines were all he had to worry about. The Nicaraguan-born, New York-based journalist had been in Guadalajara, Mexico covering a story and, as a legal permanent resident of the U.S. since 1990, he had been through customs many times.

Yet by the end of the day, Calero was stuck in an immigration detention center, surrounded by immigrants who, like himself, had lived in the U.S. for years, had raised families here and considered themselves Americans.

The reason for Calero's detention and ongoing deportation proceedings was a 1988 conviction for marijuana possession, when he was a high school student in L.A. Calero had freely disclosed his conviction on both his original application for permanent residency and his 2000 renewal; both were granted without incident.

But under strict immigration reforms passed in 1996, even legal residents convicted of a wide variety of crimes are deportable. Deportable crimes include misdemeanor drug- and gang-related incidents and other minor, nonviolent offenses as well as DUIs and sex crimes, including statutory rape.

“People with kids, houses, the whole successful American dream and now they’re getting deported,” Calero told me, noting that one of his fellow detainees had actually helped build the very center they were being held in. “These are the big ‘terrorists’ and ‘criminals' [the INS] is talking about."

What happened to Calero could happen to any of the thousands of legal immigrants in this country with past criminal convictions. Likewise for millions of undocumented immigrant workers, despite the fact that the vast majority of them are hard-working contributors to the national economy.

Take the case of Arturo, an undocumented Mexican immigrant and Chicago resident. In fall 2002, Arturo and a group of friends set out on a road trip to attend an immigrants' rights rally in Washington D.C. Little did Arturo know that a flat tire in the hills of rural Pennsylvania would crush their plans and land him and another man in jail facing deportation proceedings.

As they were fixing the flat, the van-load of brown faces caught the attention of a local police officer who found a pretense to ask for their residency papers. Arturo languished in detention in Pennsylvania for weeks before finally being released pending a deportation hearing.

Terror-Related Deportations

As part of the war on terrorism, legal immigrants of Arab descent are vulnerable to deportation after secret hearings based on nebulous "suspicion" of links to terrorism. There is a particularly high risk of deportation for those with minor visa violations, such as students who have overstayed their visas or professionals whose visa renewals are caught up in the system. While the INS has not released any data on Sept. 11-related deportations, advocate groups note that thousands have been detained and well over 1,000 have been deported -- though investigators have not found not a single link to terrorism among those deported.

Rabih Haddad, a native of Lebanon and U.S. resident for over 20 years, is one of these detainees who still remain behind bars. Haddad was arrested based on his leadership of the charity Global Relief, which the FBI claimed was funneling money to terrorists. Although the FBI couldn’t prove any terrorist links, he has been held for 14 months without bond.

Rbaih’s brother, Nazen Haddad, said Rabih's detention and impending deportation have been a horrible strain on the whole family. If Rabih is ordered deported, his wife and four children, who live in Ann Arbor, Mich. will be deported also.

"It's taking a big toll on our mother," said Haddad, who lives in Toronto. "And his wife is having to deal with raising and supporting four kids and keeping her sanity. Beyond the effect on the family it also has a sociopolitical effect on the whole community. This kind of profiling has filled everyone with fear."