Although the group says it disavows violence, more than one criminal case related to the San Diego Minutemen is now pending in the California courts. In one case now coming to trial, John Monti of Bellflower, a Los Angeles suburb, is charged with seven misdemeanors, including three counts each of battery and interfering with a person's civil rights, stemming from an incident linked to the Minutemen. Monti, who drove down to San Diego from the LA area for a Minutemen protest in November 2006, reportedly harassed, threatened and provoked a physical confrontation with a group of day laborers lined up at the intersection of Rancho Penasquitos Boulevard and Carmel Mountain Road. Monti told police the laborers threatened him when he started taking their photo with a digital camera. Jeff Schwilk, founder of the San Diego Minutemen, issued a statement saying Monti is not a member of any Minutemen groups. (KGTV, San Diego, Sept. 19)

On Sept. 15, some 100 people rallied outside the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, a privately-run immigration prison, to protest the treatment of immigration detainees. The rally culminated a week-long 105-mile march through six counties, organized by the Prison & Jail Project, a 15-year-old civil rights and prisoner rights advocacy group based in Americus, Georgia. The group's annual "Freedom Walk"—now in its 12th year—highlights racial and social inequities in the criminal justice system in rural southwest Georgia.

On Sept. 12, some 150 activists (according to the Chicago Tribune) marched through the House of Representatives' Rayburn Office Building, chanting for an end to deportation raids. The protesters had arrived in buses from Chicago, New York, Rhode Island and elsewhere. Capitol police arrested two Puerto Rican activists from Chicago following a tussle near the office door of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, where demonstrators taped up a letter demanding she take action for immigrant rights. The two were charged with disorderly conduct and released. Pelosi was out of town.

On Aug. 28, 29 and 30, ICE agents swept through the greater Boston area, arresting 36 immigrants the agency claims are members or associates of the MS-13 street gang. ICE said the raids were part of ICE's national anti-gang initiative, Operation Community Shield, launched in 2005. Most of the arrests were made in Chelsea, East Boston, Everett, Lynn, Revere and Somerville. Those arrested come from El Salvador, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.

On Aug. 24, 140 people rallied outside the immigration court in Hartford, Connecticut to demand the release of Said Zaim-Sassi, a Moroccan-born resident of Wallingford, Connecticut. Marchers wore T-shirts that said "Keep Families Together" and held up signs that called for a stop to immigration raids. Zaim-Sassi has been living in the US for 20 years; he worked for Metro-North, volunteered to help other immigrants and played soccer. His wife, Souhair Zaim-Sassi, is a Morocco-born US citizen; the couple has three US-born children, ages two, four and seven.

According to information confirmed by Raha Jorjani of the School of Law Clinical Programs at University of California, Davis, at least 30 immigration detainees have been refusing some or all meals at Pinal County Jail in Florence, Arizona. The hunger strikers are among some 60 detained immigrants who were transferred on or around Sept. 5 from the Florence Service Processing Center to the county jail, which has a new contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to provide bed space for immigration detainees.

From the sarcastically-named RNC Welcoming Committee, Sept. 3:

We Will Not Be Intimidated
On Friday, August 31, nineteen people were arrested after police brutally attacked cyclists with Tasers, pepper spray, and excessive physical force. The cyclists were part of the monthly Critical Mass bike ride.

On Aug. 27, the ACLU announced a settlement with ICE that improves conditions for immigrant children and their families inside the T. Don Hutto detention center in Taylor, Texas, a former medium security prison managed for ICE by the for-profit Corrections Corporation of America. The case was to go to trial in Austin on Aug. 27. The settlement was approved on Aug. 30 by Judge Sam Sparks of the US District Court for the Western District of Texas in Austin. "Though we continue to believe that Hutto is an inappropriate place to house children, conditions have drastically improved in areas like education, recreation, medical care, and privacy," said Vanita Gupta, a staff attorney with the ACLU's Racial Justice Program.