Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials were scheduled to appear before Judge L. John Kane in federal court in Denver on Jan. 12 in a follow-up hearing to a civil lawsuit filed by United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 7. The union filed its suit against the government a day after ICE arrested 260 workers at the Swift & Co. meatpacking plant in Greeley, Colorado. The Greeley plant was one of six Swift plants in six states raided by ICE on Dec. 12; a total of 1,282 workers were arrested. The lawsuit charges that the raid was illegal; that federal officials violated the constitutional rights of the arrested workers; and that detainees were treated inhumanely while in custody.

Palestinian immigrant Fawaz Damra, the former imam at the Islamic Center of Cleveland, Ohio, was deported on Jan. 4—a year after reaching an agreement with the US government to give up his fight to remain in the US. That agreement had stipulated that Damra would be deported either to Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Egypt or the Palestinian territories. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced on Jan. 5 that Damra had been deported to the Palestinian territories. (AP, Jan. 5; ICE news release, Jan. 5)

Chanting "We are students, not criminals," nearly 600 students and their supporters marched on Jan. 8 toward the University of Phoenix stadium in Glendale, Arizona, to protest a recently passed state law denying in-state tuition to out-of-status immigrants. Arizona voters approved the Proposition 300 ballot initiative last November; it requires students who cannot prove their legal immigration status to pay out-of-state tuition at state colleges and universities.

Francisco Lopez Barcenas writes for La Jornada, Jan. 10, via Chiapas95:

On January 1 of this year, Oaxaca woke up with one more municipality, that of San Juan Copala, created by Triqui communities who officially belong to the Mixtec municipalities of Juxtlahuaca, Putla y Constancia del Rosario, in the western part of the state; municipalities controlled by mestizos. But this isn't just one more municipality out of the 570 in the state. This one is autonomous, like those that indigenous peoples are constructing in different parts of the country as a way of defending their rights and building their own future.

Its last effort having resulted in a mistrial, the Justice Department is again trying to get narco-terrorism charges to stick against a Colombian guerilla commander. From BBC News, Jan. 9, emphasis added (note to BBC fact-checker: learn how to spell "Ricardo"):

What's really depressing about this opinion piece is that the writer really appears to believe his absurd thesis that Israel must assert its independence from the US by nuking Iran—whereas we have argued again and again and again that Israel is playing US imperialism's fool in preparing aggression against Iran. From the LA Times, Jan. 12 (link added):

From the New York Times, Jan. 13, emphasis added:

ATHENS, Jan. 12 — An antitank grenade was fired into the heavily fortified American Embassy here on Friday just before dawn. The building was empty, but the attack nonetheless underscored deep anti-American sentiment here and revived fears of a new round of homegrown terror.

Big news is that New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has brokered a ceasefire in Darfur. The small news is that no, he really didn't. And maybe, contrary to media portrayals, the JEM is correct not to take the bait, given that previous "ceasefires" have only co-opted Darfur's guerilla resistance into instruments of the Sudan regime's ethnic cleansing. From AP, Jan. 12: