Ernesto Leal was arrested on May 1st, taken from his home and sent to Belmarsh high security Prison where he was kept on a 23 hour lockdown, to await a deportation hearing. After 7 days he was moved to to Forest Bank HMP in Manchester where he was incarcerated for nearly a month.

He was imprisoned as part of The Home Office round up of foreign criminals, a week before the elections in England, as what has been described as 'politically motivated' and 'a knee jerk reaction to electoral pressures'. He was served with deportation papers.

Within 2 hours of hearting of Ernesto's arrest, Fabriko had a campaigning website up and running. The site attraced well over 400 registered users within a week. The campaign, run by Ernesto's family, gained the support of individuals, Members of Parliament, trades unions and other organisations.

We used LM Paypal module to collect donations, sell prison art and embedded an e-petitioning widget to lobby Members of Parliament.

The campaign was a huge success as Ernesto was released on appeal. The judge in the case, Lord Petherbridge made a few remarks in his judgement.

He suggests that the Secretary of State pursued this deportation not because Ernesto Leal posed a threat to society, but because of the political environment caused by the incompetence of his department. To then go on to express "revulsion" at the heavy handed tactics used to detain Ernesto Leal means that this case can not be ignored.

There is no doubt that the proposed deportation of Ernesto Leal was motivated by the vindictive Home Office, desperate to assuage public opinion following the outcry about their failure to consider released foreign nationals for deportation. Peter Wishart MP

The campaign showed how rapidly a community could be built around a single issue very rapidly - and how Drupal is so easy to deploy with all the campaigning features straight out of the box.