In El Paso, Texas, about 30 activists marked Day of the Dead on Nov. 1 by hanging 450 white wooden crosses on the border fence along the American Canal, where at least 15 people drowned this year trying to enter the US. Some crosses held the names of dead migrants, while others were blank to represent those who have not been identified. The event was organized by the Border Network for Human Rights, an El Paso-based grassroots group that keeps track of migrant deaths. According to the Border Network, 371 migrants died this year on the US-Mexico border, including 25 in El Paso and New Mexico. Border Patrol officials in El Paso recorded 27 deaths in this sector.

On Oct. 14, federal and local agents carried out a massive raid on Roosevelt Avenue, the main commercial strip of the heavily immigrant neighborhood of Jackson Heights in northern Queens, New York City. While the operation was supposedly targeting individuals accused of involvement in a fraudulent document ring, Spanish-language news reports cited witnesses saying that dozens of immigrants—possibly as many as 100—who had nothing to do with the fake IDs were also swept up in the raid. Witness Rodrigo Arce told the Spanish-language television news channel Telemundo that agents used plastic netting to trap people who were standing there talking or passing by. "They were asking people to show documents," he said. (Telemundo 47, Oct. 16) Rosario Ruiz, an employee of a Colombian bakery, said she witnessed "more than 100 arrests." Ruiz confirmed that people who just happened to be walking on the crowded avenue that Sunday afternoon were among those arrested. According to Ruiz, "Of those arrested, and there were a lot, 80% were Mexicans who were passing by here." (El Diario La Prensa, Oct. 16)

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokesperson Paula Grenier said on Nov. 2 that nine people were detained that morning in Hartford, Connecticut. The raids apparently began around 7 AM in the Parkville section of Hartford, where ICE agents went to homes and businesses on Park, South Whitney and Carpenter streets. Grenier said an ICE fugitive operation team arrested one person on an outstanding deportation order. The others were apparently swept up in the raid, suspected of being in the country without permission. Grenier declined to say how many warrants agents were trying to serve. "It was a routine operation by a fugitive operation team," she said.

On Oct. 30, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) dismissed all charges against Palestinian immigrants Khader Musa Hamide and Michel Ibrahim Shehadeh, the last two members of the "Los Angeles Eight" (LA 8) who were still fighting deportation, and approved a settlement submitted by the men's lawyers and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The BIA announced the settlement on Oct. 31.

On Oct. 10, federal judge Charles R. Breyer of US District Court in San Francisco granted a preliminary injunction barring the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from launching a planned crackdown on workers whose social security numbers don't match the Social Security Administration (SSA) database. At an earlier hearing on Oct. 1, a day after immigrant workers and their supporters demonstrated in front of San Francisco's federal building to protest the crackdown, Breyer had extended a temporary restraining order for 10 days. His Oct. 10 injunction blocks implementation of the plan until the court makes a final ruling in a lawsuit on its legality.

In a two-week sweep that ended Oct. 2, ICE officers arrested 1,327 immigrants in five southern California counties: Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura. A total of 530 people were arrested in their communities on immigration violations; ICE said 258 of them—less than half of the total--were "fugitives" who had failed to comply with deportation orders or who had reentered the US after being deported. ICE claimed that half of the 530 people arrested in the communities had criminal histories.

On Oct. 2, officials in Nassau County on New York's Long Island called for a federal investigation into an "anti-gang" sweep carried out by ICE Sept. 24-30 during which 186 immigrants were arrested in Nassau and neighboring Suffolk county. Nassau officials said the vast majority of those arrested were not gang members and that local police were misled and endangered by the operation. Nassau County police commissioner Lawrence W. Mulvey noted that many US citizens and legal residents were rousted from bed and required to produce papers during the raids, and that all but 6 of the 96 administrative warrants issued by the immigration enforcement agency in the alleged search for gang members had wrong or outdated addresses. Peter J. Smith, an ICE special agent in charge of the operation, called the Nassau county officials' allegations "without merit."

You know, every time we start to develop a soft spot for a politician, he wastes no time in disabusing us of our comfortable illusions. The most recent case in point is New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer. After taking flack from the xenophobes for his plan to make driver's licenses available to undocumented immigrants, he shared a stage with Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff in Washington Oct. 27 to announce changes to the program, bringing it into compliance with the federal REAL ID Act—and creating a special class of licenses for out-of-status immigrants. From NY1, Oct. 29: