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 El Salvador. Four of the 28 had criminal convictions; 18 had prior orders of deportation. All those arrested have been placed in deportation proceedings. Officers from the Liberal Police Department provided leads and otherwise assisted ICE during the operation. (ICE news release, April 4)

In a two-week operation that ended April 4, ICE agents from the Miami Fugitive Operations Team arrested 332 people for violating immigration laws. Michael Rozos, ICE Florida Field Office Director for the Office of Detention and Removal, announced the results of the enforcement action at an April 7 news conference in Miami. ICE arrested 147 people in Miami-Dade, 104 in Broward County and 81 in Palm Beach. According to ICE, 300 of those arrested were what the agency calls "fugitives," immigrants who had failed to comply with final orders of deportation. ICE said the other 32 people arrested "were immigration violators...who have been convicted of various crimes." Those arrested came from countries including Angola, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mauritania, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Surinam, Ukraine and Venezuela.

From the Iraq Freedom Congress (IFC), April 9:

On the Fifth Anniversary of the Occupation
The 9th of April marks the fifth anniversary of the occupation. It is the anniversary of the genocide in which more than 1 million lives have been lost and 4 million others were made homeless inside and outside Iraq. It is the anniversary of the destruction of everything that relates to humanity.

Workers from the public and private sectors throughout Burkina Faso launched a two-day strike April 8 to protest high food costs and demand salary increases. Ouagadougou, the capital, was almost completely shut down. In Bobo-Dioulasso, the second largest city in the west of the country, the central market was closed. Police were out in force in front of banks and government offices.

There have been two explosions near the local headquarters the Canadian Nexen oil company in the Yemeni capital of Sana'a. The grenade blasts took place on April 6 and 9, and caused no casualties. Nexen began oil exploration in Sana'a in 1988 and started producing oil there in 1993. The company operates Yemen's largest oil project and produced 71,600 barrels per day in 2007. The blasts come amid ongoing unrest in Yemen, with riot police still deployed against rioters in many towns in the south. (CanWest News Service, April 10)

Comorian rebel leader Mohamed Bacar was taken into custody on the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion April 4 at the request of Comoros, which is demanding his extradition. French officials are also considering Bacar's request for asylum. Bacar fled the Comoros island of Anjouan last week when Comorian and African Union troops toppled his breakaway government. Bacar and 22 followers first fled to the French island of Mayotte, but his presence there provoked riots and he was transferred to the larger island of Reunion. (Reuters, April 4)

Some 5,000 protesters shut down the southern Haitian city of Les Cayes on April 3 in a dramatic demonstration against President Rene Preval's government for failing to slow the rising cost of food and other staple products; they also protested the local administration's failure to maintain roads. From early in the morning people barricaded streets with burning tires, forcing stores, banks and schools to close down in the city, the country's third largest. While many people demonstrated peacefully, others looted food and containers of cement from trucks and warehouses. Some protesters raided the offices of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) in the Breset neighborhood, carrying away computers and other office equipment. Two MINUSTAH vehicles were set on fire.

On April 2 some 400 people demonstrated in Ouanaminthe, a city in eastern Haiti that shares the border with the Dominican city of Dajabon, to press demands for justice from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) and the Haitian judicial system in the death of 20-year-old student Emanne Saintilmont a month earlier. The Committee for Justice for Emanne blamed MINUSTAH soldiers for the young man's death and accused local officials and judges of corruption. Agents of the National Police of Haiti intervened to keep the crowd from approaching the local MINUSTAH office, although the demonstrators succeeded in delivering a letter of protest to officials there. (AlterPresse, April 3 from Solidarite Fwontalye/Service Jesuite aux Refugies et Migrants press release, April 2)