On July 20, ICE agents entered an apartment building in Waipahu, Hawaii, with nine federal search warrants. The agents arrested 43 men from Mexico who were allegedly working in Hawaii without legal status. The workers were employed by an agricultural business in Kunia called "The Farms." ICE agents were assisted in the operation by the US Marshals Service, Sheriff's Department-State of Hawaii and the US Coast Guard Investigative Service. Fifteen of the 43 arrested men were subsequently charged with federal felonies for having used fraudulent documents to gain employment. Assistant US Attorney Tracy Hino said the investigation was continuing to determine if any of the other 28 workers might be charged. All are being held at the Federal Detention Center in Honolulu. (KHON 2 News, Honolulu, July 22; AP, July 22; Honolulu Star Bulletin, Aug. 4)

More than 1,000 people, including Latin American immigrants, Catholic clergy members, rabbis and activists, marched through Postville, Iowa, on July 27 and rallied at the entrance to the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant, where ICE arrested 389 workers on May 12. The march was called to protest working conditions in the plant and to call on Congress to pass legislation granting legal status to unauthorized immigrants. Hundreds of demonstrators came by bus from Chicago and Minneapolis. Four rabbis from Minnesota and Wisconsin attended the march to publicize proposals to revise kosher food certification to include standards of corporate ethics and treatment of workers. The march drew an anti-immigrant counter-protest by about 100 people, organized by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). Police reported no incidents. (New York Times, July 28; Des Moines Register, July 28)

On July 31, ABM Janitorial Services Inc. lured 42 of its employees to its office in King of Prussia, Penn., in the suburbs just northwest of Philadelphia, where US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were waiting to arrest them for immigration violations. The company had sent the workers a memo telling them to attend a 4:30 PM meeting at the offices for training and discussion on new policy procedure, according to Kate Ferranti, a spokesperson for Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represented most of the workers. The employees that attended the meeting were promised one hour of overtime, and were told that they could pick up their weekly paychecks at the beginning of the training; they were warned that if they did not attend, their paychecks would be withheld and they could face disciplinary actions, including termination.

On July 16, ICE agents arrested 18 immigrant workers at Colorado Precast Concrete Inc. in Loveland, Colo., after executing an administrative search warrant at the plant. The workers were arrested on administrative immigration charges. One is from El Salvador; the others are from Mexico. All were taken to Park County Jail to await removal or a hearing before a federal immigration judge. The Larimer County Sheriff's Office assisted with the operation; the Air Branch of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) provided air support.

On July 15 at 5 PM, 50 agents from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and 12 detectives from the Rhode Island state police simultaneously raided all six of the state's courthouses, arresting 31 immigrants employed as maintenance workers by two contractors hired by the state. Those arrested were 16 women and 15 men, immigrants from Honduras, Guatemala, Brazil and Mexico. (Providence Journal, July 17)

Michael I. Niman, writing for ArtVoice of Buffalo, NY, July 16, reports on repression by federal law enforcement at this year's Rainbow Gathering in Wyoming's Bridger-Teton National Forest. The annual back-to-nature gathering—held in a different state each year, with a July 4 silent peace meditation in place of fireworks—has been in a long-running struggle with the Forest Service over access to the public lands. This year the feds took off the gloves—and the media played the "blame the victims" game:

On June 20, West Palm Beach resident Valery Joseph died while in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the Glades County Detention Center in Moore Haven, Florida. The 23-year-old Haitian immigrant had been living in the US since he was eight, said his mother, Jacqueline Fleury. At a news conference in Miami's Little Haiti neighborhood on July 8, the day Joseph would have turned 24, US Rep. Kendrick Meek joined Joseph's family members and immigrant rights advocates in calling for an independent investigation into what Meek called Joseph's "untimely death."

On July 10, US District Judge William Dimitrouleas in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., sentenced former ICE agent Wilfredo Vazquez to 87 months in prison for sexually assaulting a female immigration detainee in his custody. Vazquez pleaded guilty in April to two counts of sexual abuse; he admitted that in September 2007, while transporting the Jamaican detainee to a Broward County holding facility, he first took her to his home and forced her to submit to sex. (See INB, Nov. 26, 2007). The woman's identity has not been revealed; she is identified in court papers as "M.C."