Hiu Lui Ng died in the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at a Rhode Island hospital on Aug. 6, two days after his 34th birthday, from terminal cancer which had gone untreated for months. Ng had come to the US from Hong Kong at age 17 and had overstayed a student visa. In 2001, a notice ordering him to appear in immigration court was mistakenly sent to a nonexistent address, records show. Because Ng did not show up at the hearing, an immigration judge ordered him deported. Ng remained in the US, married a US citizen and had two US-born sons. He was detained on July 19, 2007, when he and his wife showed up at the immigration office for his green card interview. Since then he had been detained at a number of jails and detention centers in three New England states.

On July 20, ICE agents entered an apartment building in Waipahu, Hawaii, with nine federal search warrants. The agents arrested 43 men from Mexico who were allegedly working in Hawaii without legal status. The workers were employed by an agricultural business in Kunia called "The Farms." ICE agents were assisted in the operation by the US Marshals Service, Sheriff's Department-State of Hawaii and the US Coast Guard Investigative Service. Fifteen of the 43 arrested men were subsequently charged with federal felonies for having used fraudulent documents to gain employment. Assistant US Attorney Tracy Hino said the investigation was continuing to determine if any of the other 28 workers might be charged. All are being held at the Federal Detention Center in Honolulu. (KHON 2 News, Honolulu, July 22; AP, July 22; Honolulu Star Bulletin, Aug. 4)

More than 1,000 people, including Latin American immigrants, Catholic clergy members, rabbis and activists, marched through Postville, Iowa, on July 27 and rallied at the entrance to the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant, where ICE arrested 389 workers on May 12. The march was called to protest working conditions in the plant and to call on Congress to pass legislation granting legal status to unauthorized immigrants. Hundreds of demonstrators came by bus from Chicago and Minneapolis. Four rabbis from Minnesota and Wisconsin attended the march to publicize proposals to revise kosher food certification to include standards of corporate ethics and treatment of workers. The march drew an anti-immigrant counter-protest by about 100 people, organized by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). Police reported no incidents. (New York Times, July 28; Des Moines Register, July 28)

On July 31, ABM Janitorial Services Inc. lured 42 of its employees to its office in King of Prussia, Penn., in the suburbs just northwest of Philadelphia, where US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were waiting to arrest them for immigration violations. The company had sent the workers a memo telling them to attend a 4:30 PM meeting at the offices for training and discussion on new policy procedure, according to Kate Ferranti, a spokesperson for Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represented most of the workers. The employees that attended the meeting were promised one hour of overtime, and were told that they could pick up their weekly paychecks at the beginning of the training; they were warned that if they did not attend, their paychecks would be withheld and they could face disciplinary actions, including termination.

The Mexican Government Secretary (Segob) announced that the Prosecutor General of the Republic (PGR) is pursuing an investigation "without any limits" into the "forced disappearance" of Edmundo Reyes Amaya and Alberto Cruz, presumed militants of the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR). Segob also called upon the EPR and the government-appointed Mediation Commission to work to establish conditions for a peace dialogue. (El Financiero, Aug. 14) But the Mediation Commission announced it is temporarily suspending its activities, citing lack of good will on the part of the government. The Commission said the admission of the "forced disappearance" was a "positive" move, but insufficient. At a press conference, Commission member Carlos Montemayor protested lack of access to PGR files on the case. (Milenio, Aug. 14)

Drug-related murders in Mexico have already exceeded last year's total despite the deployment of 30,000 troops to tackle the issue. The Mexican newspaper El Universal said (Aug. 16) 2,682 people across Mexico had been killed since the start of this year, compared to 2,673 in 2007. More than one-third of this year's drug-related killings occurred in Chihuahua. The state has seen 1,026 deaths since January, including 780 in the border city of Ciudad Juárez, where 2,500 soldiers have been deployed to combat narco gangs. (BBC, Aug. 17) At least 10 people were killed, including a four-year-old boy, in a shoot-out Aug. 16 in the Chihuahua mountain town of Creel. The fighting began when men armed with AK-47s opened fire from trucks on a group leaving a dance hall. (El Universal, Aug. 17)

Five opposition governors are declaring a strike next week in Bolivia, vowing to "radicalize" tactics after talks with President Evo Morales broke down. The governors are asking Morales to refund state shares of oil and natural gas income that his government has used to give stipends to elderly citizens. Hours after the Aug. 10 recall referendum, Morales called for regional governors (prefects) that were ratified in their posts to negotiate. Department leaders from Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando, Tarija and Chuquisaca first announced they wouldn't attend the talks at the presidential palace. On Aug. 12, holding their own meeting at Santa Cruz, the prefects capitulated and agreed to meet with the president. But talks broke down over demands for the repeal of the Direct Tax on Hydrocarbons. (AP, Prensa Latina, Aug. 15; AP, Aug. 13)

Colombia's decades-long civil war, US-backed anti-drug measures and resource-hungry multinational corporations are pushing the country's indigenous peoples towards "extinction," local leaders warn. War alone uproots 20,000 Indians from their ancestral homes each year, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Most of Colombia's 84 indigenous groups have been forced at some time to flee political violence over the past decades. "We lose our identity when we're displaced," said Luis Evelis Andrade, president of the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC). "We feel lost in the big cities and it's an alien habitat for us. Our ties and traditions are with our Mother Earth. Once we leave (our lands), our language and family structures begin to break down."