Culture

Immigration Officials in the Spotlight

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The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s “Operation Return to Sender” has arrested 18,000 undocumented immigrants since June, provoking an inquiry by the ACLU into reports that agents illegally entered homes, posed as police officers, and racially profiled suspects. In McHenry County, Indiana, activists accuse county jail officials for dehumanizing treatment of 36 Mexican detainees by writing numbers on their hands instead of using their names, shackling them in cells and jailing them with criminals. The practices stopped when the Mexican Consulate stepped in, and I.C.E. disavowed any knowledge of it. And Mexican federal police detained 22 immigration agents suspected of accepting bribes to help 81 Chinese nationals, who were found “hiding” in the Cancun airport, sneak into the United States, the Associated Press reports. Sources:
“Immigrant sweeps rouse ACLU”
San Mateo County Times, March 7, 2007
“Enraged activists: Jail marked illegal workers’ hands”
NBC5 (Chicago), March 9, 2007
“81 Chinese immigrants arrested”
Associated Press, March 10, 2007

Democracy

Focus: Uganda — ‘A War Against Children’

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Jodi Wynn, Newsdesk.org
Since the Lord’s Resistance Army was formed in 1987, approximately 20,000 children in Acholiland, a region in northern Uganda, have been abducted and 1.6 million people displaced. “I feel frightened, I feel very afraid, I have returned only once to my real home,” Charles Ojok, who was abducted at age 14 on his way to school, told the BBC. Jan Egeland, a Humanitarian Affairs official for the United Nations, visited Northern Uganda in 2003 and was “shocked” by what he found. “This is above all a war against children. They are abducted, abused and violated,” he said in a press release.

Culture

Military Prison Abuse

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Research by Allison Bloch, Newsdesk.org Intern 
Get the latest on this story. Not too long ago, there was no escaping Abu Ghraib. The prisoner abuse scandal dominated the news, the photos looming suddenly from every TV screen, newspaper and magazine. Since then, the issue has retreated from media’s front burner, displaced by the parade of political conventions, the autumn presidential campaign, even the Scott Peterson trial and steroid-abusing sports stars. But the larger issue has remained simmering in the background.