Mexican socialist faces deportation

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Hector Marroquin, the young Mexican exile fighting for political asylum in the USA, has been threatened with deportation in the next two weeks by an Immigration judge.

The case, which reveals the real, squalid, face of Carter's "human rights" crusade has been continuing since 1974 when Marroquin-fleeing for his life from frame-up charges, raised by the blood-stained Mexican regime-first sought refuge in the USA.

He was caught without documents and slapped in jail for three months. Since that time, backed by a growing Defence Campaign and by the Pabloite US Socialist Workers Party, of which he became a member, Marroquin has been fighting to become the first Mexican citizen ever to achieve political asylum over the border in the USA.

But his case, which centres on the exposure of the barbarism of the Mexicán regime, and its frame-up, torture and murder of political opponents, has come at an acutely embarassing time for Carter.

Lured by the scent of the Marroquin campaigning massive offshore oil strikes recently confirmed in Mexico, Carter has been attempting to cuddle closer to the Lopez Portillo regime as a means of cushioning the USA's mounting oil crisis.

The last thing Carter needs at this point is for a US court, by granting asylum to Marroquin, to effectively declare publicly that the Mexican regime is a savage and repressive dictatorship in which legal and democratic rights are an empty charade.

Obedientiy, therefore, Judge Smith of the Immgration and Naturalisation Service brushed aside all of Marroquin's copious and well documented evidence to this effect, and ruled that Marroquin did not face a serious threat to his life and was not, therefore, entitled to political asylum.

He gave Marroquin 30 days to leave the USA or face deportation.

An appeal has been lodgedand can, if necessary be pursued as far as the Supreme Court.

But the Defence Committee, reflecting very much the petty bourgeois "pressure group' politics of the SWP, continues to skate very much over the surface of the US labour movement. Trade union supporters are almost exclusively individuals-many of them bureaucratic "big names" who have done nothing to fight for a working class rank and file mobilisation to back Marroquin.

The dangers of this approach Will now emerge more sharply with every successive setback in the courts.

Marroquin must be defended. The Committee is seeking international support as well as backing within the USA.

Donations, resolutions of support and copies of protest messages should be sent to: Hector Marroquin Defence Committee, PO Box 843, Cooper Station, New York, NY 10003, USA.