An unauthorized migrant drowned in a border canal in El Paso, Texas, on June 27 after a US Border Patrol agent trying to rescue him was hit in the head with a rock thrown by a suspected smuggler, Border Patrol officials said. The agent, who was not identified, fired at least one shot at the suspected smuggler and at another would-be immigrant, who fled back into Mexico, Border Patrol spokesperson Patrick Berry said. It was unclear how many shots the agent fired or whether either of the fleeing men were hit by bullets. The drowned man's body was found in the canal more than four miles east of where the agents saw him go under the water, Berry said. The shooting is under investigation; it was the third involving a Border Patrol agent in the El Paso area this year. (AP, June 27)

On June 23, some 500 activists marked World Refugee Day by gathering outside the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, an ICE detention center holding immigrant families with children in Taylor, Texas. The facility holds more than 500 immigrants, including hundreds of children. The Taylor Police Department was dispatched to the Hutto facility to prevent protestors from entering private property, but they did not try to stop the vigil.

On July 5, De La Salle High School in Concord, California, was locked down for 15 minutes while ICE sought to arrest a construction worker on the school grounds. Confusion erupted after two Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police officers driving past the school that morning saw a suspicious man with a holstered handgun disappear between two buildings. The BART officers notified school administrators and the Concord police, which sent officers to the school to intercept the mystery gunman. The gunman turned out to be one of four undercover ICE agents seeking to arrest a Mexican immigrant employed by a contractor doing asbestos abatement at the school. According to ICE spokesperson Virginia Kice, the worker had a prior conviction for driving under the influence and had failed to comply with an immigration judge's order to leave the country. Kice said the employer told ICE where to find the worker, but the agents didn't realize it was a school until they arrived, and then they assumed that because it was summer, no students would be around, so they proceeded with the arrest.

The Pentagon said July 6 it has appealed a decision by a military judge to dismiss the case of a Guantanamo Bay detainee accused of killing a US soldier in Afghanistan. It is the first use of the appeals process since it was created by Congress last year to handle cases involving Guantanamo detainees. Omar Ahmed Khadr, a Canadian citizen, is one of two detainees whose military trials were dismissed because they were not identified as "unlawful" enemy combatants. The other is Yemeni detainee Salim Ahmed Hamdan, allegedly Osama bin Laden's former driver. Prosecutors filed an appeal in Khadr's case with the Court of Military Commission Review on July 4, a Pentagon spokesman said.

A shipload of Israeli weapons is busted in Spain—bound for Nicaragua. The Nicaraguan government denies knowing anything about it. Could they have been bound for some kind of neo-contra force? Talk about nostalgia for the '80s... From Prensa Latina, July 5:

Nicaraguan Police and Army denied their responsibility for a cargo of weapons made in Israel, seized in Spain's Port Algeciras, with the Central American nation as final destination.

Remember all the "not-about-Iraq" spewing after the July 2005 London bombings? Nobody's saying that this time around. From the Washington Post, July 6:

LONDON -- Bilal Abdulla, one of the two doctors arrested after a blazing Jeep Cherokee rammed into the Glasgow Airport terminal on Saturday, is a deeply religious Iraqi who was angry that his prominent Sunni family "lost everything" following the 2003 invasion led by the United States and Britain, according to a close family member.

From the Iranian Student News Agency (ISNA), July 5:

Alieh Eghdam Doost, who was arrested on June 12, 2006 for attending a women's rights rally in Tehran, is sentenced to three years and five months prison term and 20 lashes, her attorney, Nasim Ghanavi, said to ISNA today.

From the Iraq Freedom Congress (IFC), July 6:

Statement of Iraq Freedom Congress on the Assassination of Abdelhussein Saddam
The terrorist US forces kidnapped Abdelhussein Saddam, head of the Safety Force of the Iraq Freedom Congress after opening fire at him and his daughter on the 4th of July in Alattiba neighborhood in Baghdad. Two days after the abduction, his body was found in the Forensic Center in Yarmouk Hospital. The US force that committed this criminal act was a special task force who used special vehicles with the assistance of the Iraqi National Guards.