On Nov. 27, Somali immigrant Nuradin Abdi was sentenced to 10 years in prison in US District Court in Columbus, Ohio, for his role in an alleged plot to bomb a shopping mall. Abdi, a cell phone salesperson before his November 2003 arrest, pleaded guilty in July 2007 of one count of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. [In 2004, questions were raised about whether Abdi's mental state had been broken through torture while he was in immigration detention—see Immigration News Briefs, July 31, 2004]. Abdi first entered the US in 1995 with a false passport and was later granted asylum "based on a series of false statements," according to the Department of Justice (DOJ). A DOJ spokesperson said Abdi would be deported to Somalia after serving his prison term.

In a 71-page report released on Dec. 7, Human Rights Watch urged the Department of Homeland Security to upgrade its care and treatment of immigration detainees with HIV, the virus associated with AIDS. According to the watchdog organization, the agency fails to monitor medical care for detainees with HIV, and doesn't even know the extent of the problem among the nearly 30,000 people it holds in immigration detention on any given day. "The US government has no idea how many of these immigrants have HIV or AIDS, how many need treatment, and how many are receiving the care that is necessary," said Megan McLemore of Human Rights Watch's HIV/AIDS program.

Canada's federal court ruled on Nov. 29 that the US breaches the rights of asylum seekers under the United Nations Refugee Convention and the Convention Against Torture. Justice Michael Phelan cited the example of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was detained in September 2002 by US immigration officials at JFK Airport in New York while in transit to Canada and deported to Syria, where he was tortured for 10 months under a policy later identified as "extraordinary rendition."

A US Border Patrol official confirmed on Nov. 13 that agents investigating human smuggling on commercial bus lines arrested more than 100 illegal immigrants in the area of Twin Falls, Idaho, over the past week. The number of people arrested was later confirmed to be 108. Alex Harrington, spokesperson for US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in Havre, Montana, said the ongoing operation was not coordinated with unconfirmed reports of repeated strikes over the past week by immigration agents at other locations, including malls and a bank.

On Nov. 16, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Wilfredo Vazquez was arrested by federal agents in Tampa, FL, and charged with three counts of knowingly causing a detainee under his supervision to engage in a sexual act. According to the accusation, Vazquez was driving a Jamaican woman, identified in an ICE press release only with the initials "M.C.," from ICE's Krome Service and Processing Center in Miami-Dade to the Broward Transition Center in Pompano Beach on the afternoon of Sept. 21 when he took a detour to his home in Tamarac and raped her there.

On Nov. 13, in its second day of deliberations, a federal jury in Newark, NJ, awarded former asylum seeker Hawa Abdi Jama of Somalia $100,000 in damages after finding the private company that ran an immigration detention facility in Elizabeth negligent in its hiring and training. The jury rejected a claim that Jama's international human rights were violated during her 11-month detention at Elizabeth in 1994-95.

Your tax dollars at work. From the marijuana advocacy site CelebStoner, Nov. 14:

California crop report: Nearly three million pot plants destroyed
California not only leads the nation in pot production, but also in plant eradication. With the outdoor harvest over, the state's Department of Justice announced on Nov. 13 that 2.9 million cannabis plants were destroyed this year. That's an increase of 1.2 million plants since last year and a total increase of 1.8 million plants since 2005.

A glimmer of hope—but it's pretty terrifying that this was under consideration, even by the supposedly enlightened Chief William Bratton. Some of us remember the mass detention of Southern California Muslims by immigration authorities in 2002. From AFP, Nov. 16:

LOS ANGELES — Police in Los Angeles have abandoned a controversial anti-terrorism plan that would have created a compute database of the city's Muslim population, media here reported Thursday.