On Nov. 19, a task force of more than 60 federal and local law enforcement personnel conducted a pre-dawn raid targeting gang members at 28 locations in the Newhall and Canyon Country sections of Santa Clarita, in Los Angeles County. Agencies participating in the sweep included ICE, the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff Station's Detective Bureau, the City of Santa Clarita/Sheriff's COBRA Unit and the Community Interaction Team (CIT), the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) and the Los Angeles County Department of Probation. A total of 21 people were arrested: four were booked on new criminal charges at the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff's Station; 15 were transported by ICE to downtown Los Angeles to face immigration proceedings; and two are being presented to the US Attorney's Office for prosecution on federal felony charges of re-entering the country after deportation. (Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff's Station press release, Nov. 19 via SCVTV; Contra Costa Times, Nov. 19)

On Nov. 18, ICE agents arrested 33 people in the New Jersey towns of Butler (Morris County) and Bloomingdale (Passaic County) in a sweep targeting people whom local police suspect have been taking part in gang activity, according to ICE spokesperson Harold Ort. ICE identified 12 of the 33 people arrested as violent gang members, six of whom have criminal records in New Jersey, Ort said. The gang members belong to the Mexican Latin Kings and Sureno 13, said Ort. The 31 men and two women arrested were sent to county jails in Middlesex, Hudson and Essex counties; ICE spokesperson Michael Gilhooly said that ICE may decide to transfer them to jails in other states. All those arrested will go before an immigration judge for removal proceedings, Gilhooly said.

The manufacturing company Michael Bianco, Inc. has agreed to pay $850,000 to settle a federal class action lawsuit over unpaid overtime and wages at its former factory in New Bedford, Mass. The settlement includes $613,000 in unpaid wages to be distributed to 764 workers, including some of the 361 immigrant workers who were arrested in an ICE raid at the factory on March 6, 2007. Greater Boston Legal Services (GBLS), which has provided free counsel to more than 100 of the arrested workers, announced the settlement at a Nov. 18 press conference. GBLS joined with South Coastal Counties Legal Services and attorney Philip Gordon of the Gordon Law Group in filing the lawsuit last year in federal district court in Boston.

On Nov. 20, six teenagers were arraigned in Suffolk County Criminal Court on multiple counts of gang assault and hate crimes in connection with the Nov. 8 killing of Ecuadoran immigrant Marcelo Lucero in the community of Patchogue on Long Island, NY. A grand jury indictment unsealed on Nov. 20 lays out additional charges against the same defendants for earlier crimes targeting Latin American immigrants. The judge set bail for five of the youths at $250,000 cash or $500,000 bond; bail was denied to a sixth defendant who has a prior felony conviction for a 2007 burglary in which an East Patchogue man was killed. A seventh teenager, 17-year-old Jeffrey Conroy, is scheduled to be arraigned on Nov. 24 on charges of second-degree murder and manslaughter as a hate crime; Conroy is accused of stabbing Lucero in the chest, killing him. All seven teens have pleaded not guilty in the attack on Lucero.

On Nov. 12 and 13, sheriff's deputies in Weld County, Colo., arrested 13 people in "Operation Number Games," a round-up of suspects who allegedly filed tax returns using suspicious Social Security numbers. Two more suspects were arrested in the sweep on Nov. 14. The suspects were identified from information uncovered in an Oct. 17 search of Amalia's Translation and Tax Services, a business in Greeley that primarily serves immigrants. As of Nov. 14, the District Attorney's office had presented a total of 98 cases. Deputies said they were continuing to search for suspects named on warrants while they wait for a judge to act on additional warrant requests. The investigation is expected to last for a year or more, with possibly more than 1,300 arrests. Weld DA Ken Buck said he believes a majority of the suspects will ultimately be charged with felony criminal impersonation rather than the more serious charge of identity theft.

Its not The Hague, but its a start. From AFP, Nov. 19:

Texas jury indicts Cheney, Gonzalez in prison abuse case
WASHINGTON — A Texas grand jury has issued indictments against Vice President Dick Cheney and former attorney general Alberto Gonzalez over abuse at privately run prisons, court documents showed.

A Kentucky jury Nov. 14 ordered three members of the Imperial Klans of America (IKA), including "Imperial Wizard" Ron Edwards, to pay $1.5 million in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages for a racially motivated attack against Jordan Gruver, a 16-year-old boy of Panamanian descent, during an apparent Klan recruitment event at a county fair in Meade, Ky. Gruver, who was severely beaten by Edwards' followers, is a US citizen, but the Klansmen mistakenly believed he was an undocumented immigrant, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which represented the youth in the case.

In a Nov. 16 statement, Human Rights Watch said that upon inauguration US president-elect Barack Obama should immediately repudiate the previous administration's "abusive" counter-terrorism policies in order to bring US practices into accordance with the country's "basic values" and its own obligations under international law. HRW released a report delineating the 11 measures Obama should pursue, including closing the military prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, abolishing military commissions in favor of trying terrorist suspects in federal court, issuing an executive order banning "all torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment" in CIA interrogations, and rejecting the "global war on terror" as a legal justification for the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects.