On Jan. 6 the Venezuelan foreign ministry announced that it was expelling the Israeli ambassador, Shlomo Cohen, to express solidarity with the "heroic Palestinian people" after Israeli's Dec. 27 military assault on the Palestinian territory of Gaza. Before the announcement, President Hugo Chávez Frias had described the Israeli military as "cowardly" and had called for Israeli president Shimon Peres and US president George W. Bush to be tried by the International Criminal Court for genocide.

Israeli forces battled Palestinian resistance fighters in Gaza City early Jan. 14, advancing hundreds of yards towards the city center over the past 24 hours. Israeli warplanes meanwhile bombed Rafah and the Strip's southern border with Egypt. Medical sources said some 70 people were killed Jan. 13, taking the overall toll to around 975 Palestinians, with another 4,400 wounded. The Israeli death toll since the start of the offensive remains at 13, including three civilians. At least six more soldiers have been wounded.

In a Jan. 9 meeting with ambassadors and consuls in Mexico City, President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa denied that there was chaos in Mexico and that "the civilian population was being massacred in the streets." He was apparently referring to fighting among drug cartels and between drug traffickers and the government. (La Jornada, Jan. 10) More than 8,000 people have been killed in Mexico's drug wars over the past two years. A study by the US Joint Forces Command, a US military planning group, warns that the Mexican state may "bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse" because of "sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels... Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone." (International Herald Tribune, Jan. 9 from Reuters)

Three undocumented immigrants were killed and eight others injured when state preventive police fired on a truck near San Cristóbal de las Casas in the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas on the morning of Jan. 9. Police agents opened fire after the driver refused to stop the truck, which was carrying some 30 Chinese, Ecuadoran and Guatemalan immigrants entering from Guatemala in transit to the US. The agents continued to shoot during a 20-minute chase that ended with the truck crashing. All the injured and at least one of the dead had received bullet wounds; the driver and an immigrant smuggler escaped. Two of the agents were reportedly detained. (La Jornada, Jan. 10)

On Jan. 7, the Colombian government authorized Senator Piedad Córdoba to participate in the release of six hostages from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The mission will be headed by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). (President Uribe indicated previously that he didn't want Córdoba involved.) (Latin American Herald Tribune, Jan. 8)

On Jan. 8 the National Security Archive, a Washington, DC-based research group, released declassified US government documents showing that US diplomats and the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) knew at least since 1994 that the Colombia security forces "employ death squad tactics in their counterinsurgency campaign," in the words of a 1994 CIA report. The military had a "history of assassinating left-wing civilians in guerrilla areas, cooperating with narcotics-related paramilitary groups in attacks against suspected guerrilla sympathizers and killing captured combatants," the CIA report said. The release of the documents came six days before Colombian president Alvaro Uribe was to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom from US president George W. Bush. (Latin America Herald Tribune, Jan. 9)

On Dec. 19 US Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff wrote Haitian president René Préval that "[a]fter very careful consideration" he was rejecting the Haitian government's request for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for undocumented Haitians in the US. This would have allowed the immigrants to remain in the US until Haiti recovered from the two hurricanes and two tropical storms that hit in one month during the summer; the US granted TPS to many Central Americans after hurricane Mitch struck in 1998, and the designation has been renewed ever since. The US briefly suspended deportations to Haiti after the storms but resumed in December. Homeland Security spokesperson Michael Keegan said 28 Haitians had been repatriated since the resumption.

On Jan. 6 Dominican soldiers removed some 600 Haitian immigrants without incident from the Nuestra Senora del Rosario church in the city of Dajabon, on the northwestern border with Haiti. The immigrants had occupied the church the day before after Dominican authorities denied them permission to return from Haiti to the Dominican Republic, where they had been living and working. Following lengthy negotiations with Father Regino Martínez, the Jesuit head of the Dominican human rights group Border Solidarity, the authorities allowed 75-80 of the Haitians to stay in the Dominican Republic. Escorted by soldiers, the other immigrants—including whole families carrying their belongings on their shoulders—walked to the neighboring Haitian city of Ouanaminthe.