Stop Deportation of Chilean Leftist Victor Toro!

(Class-Struggle Defense Notes)

A March 2 ruling by Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Sarah Burr in New York has put the life of exiled Chilean leftist Victor Toro in danger. The ruling denied political asylum and ordered the deportation of the 68-year-old Toro, who suffered imprisonment and torture under the U.S.-backed military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. In 1976, Toro was expelled from Chile and declared “dead,” leaving him stateless and unable to obtain identity papers. Evading Pinochet’s murderous agents abroad, Toro arrived in the U.S. in 1984 and became a well-known community activist in the South Bronx, where he assisted immigrants and the poor as well as battered women and people with HIV/AIDS. In 2007, he was arrested on an Amtrak train during an anti-immigrant sweep. The labor movement, the left and immigrant rights groups must join in opposing his deportation and demanding that he be granted political asylum.

In 1974, the year following the coup led by Pinochet that overthrew the popular-front government of Salvador Allende, the military regime arrested Toro, who became a mine worker in the late 1950s and later a founder of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR). The MIR was targeted by the military junta as part of a bloody wave of repression that included widespread “disappearances” and torture and the slaughter of over 30,000 union militants, leftists and others. His wife, Nieves Ayress, a U.S. citizen, is also a survivor of torture in Pinochet’s dungeons.

In arguing for Toro’s deportation and denial of his appeal for political asylum, Homeland Security lawyers repeated claims made in CIA documents at the height of the 1970s repression in Chile that the MIR was a “terrorist organization.” This false and sinister argument, equating leftist political activity with terrorism, magnifies the danger to Toro should he be returned to Chile. Judge Burr ruled that Toro is not eligible for political asylum because he should have applied before 1997, while Pinochet was serving as the head of Chile’s armed forces under the “democratic” government that succeeded his regime in 1990. As noted in legal papers filed by his lawyer, Carlos Moreno, Toro “has made sworn statements against members of the Chilean military who committed human rights violations,” making him to this day “a target of members of the Chilean military who although not governing the country nevertheless retain a great deal of power.”

Victor Toro’s lawyer filed a notice of appeal on March 17. Asylum now for Victor Toro! No deportation!