THE NOTION that Jean, a 49-year-old naturalized US citizen who lives in Roslindale, could be labeled a terrorist is so surreal that he’s become something of a cause célèbre within Greater Boston’s immigrant community. He’s appeared on Haitian radio programs and been featured in Haitian newspapers. His case has even caught fire among Boston-area immigrants generally — from Hondurans and Salvadorans to Guatemalans and Colombians. Just last month, four immigrant-rights organizations in and around Boston hosted a March 23 solidarity rally for Jean that attracted as many as 400 immigrants.

Tito Meza, of the Proyecto Hondureño 2000, a Chelsea-based group that helped organize the event, explains that the average immigrant finds Jean’s case "relevant." Since September 11, more and more immigrants who work hard and pay taxes — many of whom have legal papers and work permits — are losing their jobs. Some, like Jean, are facing criminal charges. Immigrants now fear that any minor incident or mistake will be used against them. "People identify with Marcus," Meza says. "They see his case is based on prejudice. It’s a product of the backlash against immigrants in the US."

On the surface, Jean comes across as the antithesis of terror. Tall, strapping, and sporting a mustache, he boasts a bright smile and a quiet yet genial disposition. His colleagues at the Laidlaw school-bus yard in Readville — one of four yards in Boston — paint him as a diligent worker and devoted family man, a father of four young children who spends much of his leisure time at his Baptist church. "Marcus is a very serious, committed person," says Frantz Mendes, a fellow driver who first befriended Jean as a boy in his native Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital. "He never purposefully gets in people’s way. He just goes about his business." Jean puts it another way: "I have respect for what I do. I take pride in my life."

In retrospect, it seems, Jean’s pride set off the chain of events leading to his current plight. On January 30, right after 5 p.m., he drove his empty bus into the Readville terminal, where some 200 school buses are housed daily. He had just finished his route shuttling schoolchildren from the Renaissance Charter School, located downtown, to neighborhoods such as Dorchester, Mattapan, and Hyde Park. Like most drivers at the end of a 10-hour shift, he wanted nothing more than to park his bus and head home. But first, he had to pick up after the kids who’d been on the bus.

So Jean stopped his vehicle in front of a dumpster, a common practice among the drivers, and cleaned. "I was sweeping out my bus," he recalls, when a fellow driver entered the yard and tried to park — to no avail. Jean had inadvertently blocked several spots, which the other driver did not appreciate. "He was in a rush," says Stevan Kirschbaum, a 27-year employee who was sitting in his bus near the dumpster at the time. Irritated, the driver leaned on the horn, as if to say, "Get out of the way." Yet this didn’t faze Jean. "I was busy cleaning," he recalls. The driver — an older, white man whom USWA members decline to identify — grew so agitated that Kirschbaum felt compelled to intervene. "I shouted to the guy, ‘Hey, chill out. It’s no big deal,’" he says. "Marcus just emptied his trash. I don’t think he even said a word."

By the time Jean completed his task, the other driver had left. But not before he griped about the annoying encounter to Diane Kelly, then the assistant manager at the Readville yard. When Jean entered the yard’s management trailer, where drivers punch a time clock, Kelly called him into her office. "She thought we had an argument," Jean remembers. He downplayed the incident, telling her it was "no big deal." Kelly, he says, warned him not to park before the dumpster. She did not reprimand him, or issue a written warning. Adds Jean, "She said, ‘Okay. Go home.’"

Jean didn’t think twice about the dumpster — that is, until the next day. On January 31, after finishing his route at 10 a.m., he entered the management trailer, where a handful of drivers were milling about. Jean had come to the facility seeking copies of a training letter that he needed to renew his bus-driver’s license. He approached McLaughlin, who oversees the Readville yard, and asked for a copy. It wasn’t long before the manager inquired about the dumpster. "He asked, ‘What happened last night, Marcus? Tell me,’" says Jean, who recalls replying: "I already talked to Diane." Jean, in other words, was making it clear that he knew his rights; according to union rules, once a manager addresses an issue with an employee, it’s closed. It cannot be broached again. Still, he says, "Rick kept needling me."

This was not the first time that Jean had bumped up against McLaughlin. Several weeks earlier, he had had a disagreement with the manager after a child had vomited on his bus. Jean had stopped en route to clean the mess, causing him to run an hour late. But when he applied for overtime, he says, the manager refused the request. Jean later filed a union grievance — and won. Yet the victory seemed bittersweet. McLaughlin, Jean says, "told me he was going to get me anyway."

Those words lingered in Jean’s mind on January 31. But he felt he’d done nothing to warrant a reprimand. "I told Rick, ‘This is unfair.’ He wasn’t giving the other guy a hard time," Jean says. Indeed, union rules specify that if McLaughlin wanted to raise the matter a second time, he should have spoken to both parties. By all accounts, the conversation between the two devolved into a shouting match. Jean accused the manager of discrimination. McLaughlin, in turn, demanded Jean return to the trailer with a "shop steward," which, to a driver, means that disciplinary action is imminent.

Eventually, Jean sought out his childhood friend Mendes, who serves as a union steward for the Readville drivers. Mendes escorted Jean to the trailer, where he says McLaughlin accused Jean of terrorism. "He said Marcus had threatened to blow up the building," which Mendes presumed to be the trailer. (Although the criminal complaint does not specify a building, the only structures at the yard are the management trailer and an adjacent break room for drivers.) McLaughlin suspended Jean with pay, pending an investigation into the charges. He ordered Jean to fill out an incident report detailing their previous argument. The driver did so, maintaining his innocence. "At no time," he wrote in the January 31 report, "did I use any threats or misconducted myself." The accusations alarmed Mendes, who insists Jean "is not a person who would even joke about threats." He thought the matter too serious to be resolved on the spot, especially since he had to start another bus run. Mendes requested more time. "I had to go," he says; and so he and Jean left.

Evidently, McLaughlin did not honor Mendes’s request. Almost four hours after speaking with Mendes, McLaughlin entered Boston police station E-18, in Hyde Park, and filed a criminal complaint against Jean on behalf of Laidlaw. According to the report, McLaughlin told police that Jean had become "really irrational and loud" after an argument "regarding the parking of the buses in the lot." He then detailed this scenario: "The suspect became even more upset and began calling ‘Blanco’ and making racial statements in Creole.... The suspect threatened to ‘blow up the building,’ and saying he didn’t care if he got fired, and that if he went to jail, he’d ‘get someone else to blow up the building,’ and if he ‘got out,’ he’d come back and ‘blow it up.’"

Those are dramatic statements, for sure. But McLaughlin’s account of what happened January 31 — which Jean vehemently denies — has yet to be corroborated. Many of the drivers who witnessed the conversation back up Jean’s version of events. In fact, Wilson, Jean’s attorney, plans to file at least four sworn affidavits on May 2, when Jean will appear for a pretrial hearing. According to these documents, one Haitian driver who has worked at the Readville yard for nearly 10 years confirms that Jean never suggested he’d harm anyone or anything. At no time, the driver’s affidavit states, "did Jean threaten McLaughlin in English or in Creole. The whole discussion was only in English." The most inflammatory thing to come out of Jean’s mouth that day were his heated claims that, according to the driver, "McLaughlin did not believe his version of what happened the night before ... because he was not one of ‘McLaughlin’s people.’"

Another Haitian driver echoes these sentiments in a second affidavit: "Jean said he was being treated unfairly, and discriminated [against]. They argued about this point." He then adds, "This conversation was entirely in English. Jean did not speak in Creole, knowing that McLaughlin could not understand."

Jean himself offers rather wryly, "I wonder when [McLaughlin] learned to speak Creole. No one has heard him speak it" to Haitian drivers — who make up 80 percent of the Laidlaw drivers. Which means, of course that he wouldn’t have been able to translate the alleged racial statements either. McLaughlin, for his part, did not return two phone calls from the Phoenix seeking comment for this article. And Reilly, the Laidlaw human-resources director, refused the Phoenix’s formal request to interview the manager. He also declined to answer any specific questions about the complaint — including whether McLaughlin, a younger, white man who is known to insist that drivers speak English on the job, can actually understand Creole. Says Reilly, "I am not going to talk about the contents of the criminal complaint."

Still, the manager’s allegations have had devastating consequences for Jean, who did not find out about the criminal charge against him until February 8, one week after the complaint was filed, when he received a court summons in the mail. By the time he appeared in West Roxbury District Court on February 28, he had been suspended for nearly one month — despite his unblemished personnel file. Steve Gillis, a fellow driver and the union steward assigned to represent Jean, has seen Jean’s file and describes it as "immaculate." It contains an application, medical evaluations, and criminal-background checks, which drivers must undergo when renewing licenses. The file reflects not one vehicular accident — a rarity for drivers who navigate city streets in vehicles full of 70 kids, Gillis notes. "No one can say he’s a problem employee." Even so, on March 1 Laidlaw fired Jean for his alleged threats, after concluding an internal investigation — which, according to Gillis, was conducted by McLaughlin himself.

It’s bad enough that Jean has lost his job. Now, however, he must also grapple with the serious legal ramifications of a criminal complaint that he and others find absurd. "This," he says, "is a set-up."