Eight teenage male immigrant detainees filed a federal lawsuit on April 3, claiming they were beaten and subjected to other excessive force at a privately-run 122-bed detention facility in San Antonio, Tex. The plaintiffs from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and… Read moreKids sue Texas immigration detention center over abuse
On April 3, Seton Hall Law School’s Center for Social Justice and Lowenstein Sandler, PC, filed suit in Federal District Court in New Jersey, alleging that federal law enforcement officials violated the rights of people whose homes they entered during… Read moreNJ lawsuit challenges ICE home raids
In a two-day operation ending March 30, ICE Fugitive Operations Team agents arrested 28 immigrants in Liberal, Kansas. Those arrested were 23 men and five women. Twenty of them were from Guatemala, six were from Mexico, and two were from… Read moreICE “fugitive” raids in Midwestern states
In an April 1 statement, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the federal government plans to speed up completion of 470 miles of border fence in the southwestern US by the end of 2008 by using two waivers to bypass… Read moreLaws to be waived for border fence
On April 2, several dozen demonstrators gathered in front of Penn Station in Manhattan to protest the collaboration of the Amtrak train company with border and immigration agents who arrest passengers traveling between US cities. With chants of “transportation, not… Read moreActivists protest immigration arrests on Amtrak, Greyhound
On April 1, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested 44 workers at the warehouses of three distribution companies—Samsung, Frontier and Imperial CSS—in an industrial park in Torrance, Calif., just south of Los Angeles. ICE spokesperson Virginia Kice said all… Read moreICE raids warehouses in LA area
On March 3, jailed Palestinian professor Sami Al-Arian was informed that he would be called to testify before a grand jury in Virginia which is investigating allegations that Muslim charities aided terrorism organizations. Al-Arian responded by starting a hunger strike… Read moreAl-Arian still jailed, on hunger strike
In a decision dated March 11, US District Judge Dean Pregerson in Los Angeles ruled that the family of Salvadoran immigrant Francisco Castañeda can continue to pursue a lawsuit against individual government officials for violating Castañeda’s constitutional rights and can… Read moreJudge blasts ICE over detainee death
In a March 2 petition addressed to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Attorney General Michael Mukasey, 93 immigration detainees at Middlesex County jail in New Jersey complained about inadequate medical treatment for two fellow detainees, including a man named… Read moreNew Jersey immigration detainees protest medical neglect
On March 7, a group of Indian welders, pipe-fitters, and marine fabrication workers employed under the federal H-2B visa program filed a federal lawsuit against Signal International, alleging that they were lured to work at the company’s shipyards in Pascagoula,… Read moreH-2 workers file suit, march to DC
An ongoing occupation of threatened oak trees on the campus of UC Berkeley reached its 485th day March 30. Perversely, the grove of some 90 California oaks was planted in 1923 as a memorial to Californians who lost their lives… Read moreBerkeley tree-sit nears 500 days
On Good Friday, March 21, three New Orleans residents who entered the vacant Lafitte Housing Development in a bid to save it from being razed were arrested and charged under an anti-terrorist “critical structure” law enacted by the Louisiana legislature… Read moreNew Orleans public housing defenders charged under terror law
