From the New York state chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW), Feb. 16:

ALBANY, NY — On February 12, 2009, in Orchard Park, Buffalo, NY, forty-four year-old Muzzamil Hassan, a prominent Muslim businessman, was arrested for having allegedly beheaded his wife, thirty-seven year-old Aasiya Z. Hassan. What was Aasiya's crime? Why, Aasiya was having Muzzamil served with divorce papers. And apparently, on February 6, Aasiya obtained an order of protection which had forced her violent husband out of their home.

A trial started last week in federal court in Tucson against vigilante rancher Roger Barnett, his wife, Barbara, and his brother, Donald—all charged with conspiring to violate the civil rights of undocumented immigrants who crossed through his sprawling property along the Mexican border near Douglas, AZ. Attorneys for the immigrants—five women and 11 men—accuse Barnett of holding the group captive at gunpoint, brutalizing one, threatening to turn his dog loose on them and saying he would shoot anyone who tried to escape. The 16 migrants are seeking $32 million in actual and punitive damages.

The blog Green is the New Red notes Feb. 5 that environmental activist and mother of two Marie Mason was sentenced to 21 years for her role in an arson attack 10 years ago at a Michigan State University biotech lab—in which nobody was injured. The FBI nonetheless hyped the case as "domestic terrorism." Lansing's WLNS TV reported that the town was on "high alert" following FBI warnings that Animal Liberation Front "terrorists" might attend the sentencing at the federal courthouse. Three days earlier, an FBI press release announced guilty pleas from four young men who carried out racist assauls on New York's Staten Island the night of Barack Obama's election victory. As we noted, one of the victims, a teen-aged Liberian immigrant, had his scalp ripped open with baseball bats. The press release informs us that another, "whom the defendants mistakenly believed was African-American," was run over with a car and remained in coma for weeks. Three of the men received 10-year terms; a fourth who held out before copping a plea received 12 years. Mason, like the Staten Island thugs, also copped a plea—but on significantly harsher terms.

On Feb. 4, Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona's Maricopa County marched shackled immigrants in black-striped jail uniforms through the streets of Phoenix from the Durango Jail to a new Tent City he has erected to hold them, surrounded by an electric fence. The degrading spectacle was a blatant publicity stunt to promote Arpaio's new Fox Reality Channel TV program. Meanwhile, Arizona's ex-Gov. Janet Napolitano, the new Homeland Security secretary, has called for a review of immigration enforcement measures—including 287g, which allows local police to enforce federal civil immigration law. Maricopa County has entered into a 287g agreement with the federal government that gives Sheriff Arpaio broad powers to detain immigrants—whether or not they are accused of committing criminal offenses.

Details are still sketchy of an inmate uprising at a privately-operated federal detention facility in West Texas Jan. 31. Reports in the US and Mexican press suggest the revolt, involving hundreds prisoners at the Reeves County Detention Center in Pecos erupted after complaints of poor medical treatment went unheeded. Initial accounts report the uprising spanned two days, with inmates setting fires and possibly even seizing guards' radio communication equipment. An unidentified Reeves County official earlier told El Diario de El Paso the situation was “dangerous” inside the facility managed by the Geo Group.

In the inevitable analogy to Abraham Lincoln that Barack Obama has deftly exploited, it is largely forgotten that Lincoln was only pushed to an emancipationist position by two years of civil war. Similarly, whether Obama will embrace a more sweeping agenda—re-negotiate NAFTA, nationalize the banks, instate a "Green New Deal"—may depend on how deeply the American system goes into crisis over the next years. Our January Exit Poll was: "Will Barack Obama be radicalized in office by historical circumstance as Lincoln was?" We received the following responses:

A deported Mexican woman who took sanctuary in a Chicago church to highlight immigrants' rights is asking President Barack Obama to call a halt to immigration raids. Elvira Arellano says she is hopeful that Obama will help pass an immigration reform that stops dividing families. She spoke to reporters outside the US Embassy in Mexico City, where she gave officials a letter asking Obama to sign an executive order stopping the raids and deportations. (AP, Jan. 22)

In an opinion released late on Jan. 7, Attorney General Michael Mukasey wrote that "neither the Constitution nor any statutory or regulatory provision entitles an alien to a do-over if his initial removal proceeding is prejudiced by the mistakes of a privately retained lawyer." The ruling came in the case of three people ordered deported who said their cases had been hurt by attorney errors. Mukasey's ruling is binding over the immigration courts, which are part of the Department of Justice rather than the judiciary. Immigrant advocates said they expected the ruling to be challenged in federal appeals courts. Until recently the Board of Immigration Appeals, the highest review panel within the immigration system, had generally found that immigrants whose lawyers had made critical errors could seek to reopen their cases on constitutional grounds. (New York Times, Jan. 8)