POSTVILLE, IA; May 13 - In the biggest workplace immigration raid this year, federal agents swept into a kosher meat plant on Monday in Postville, Iowa, and arrested more than 300 workers.

The authorities said the workers were suspected of being in the United States illegally or of having participated in identity theft and the fraudulent use of Social Security numbers.

WATERLOO, IA; May 12 - Federal officials have imposed a news blackout at the National Cattle Congress fairgrounds in Waterloo, where they have leased almost the entire property through May 25.

Tim Counts, a Midwest spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, declined to say Monday whether an immigration raid is pending that would use the fairgrounds as a detention center.

MAY 7 - The head of a Congressional subcommittee looking into complaints of inadequate medical care in immigration detention announced on Tuesday that she had introduced legislation to set mandatory standards for care and to require that all deaths be reported to the Justice Department and Congress.

Word spread quickly inside the windowless walls of the Elizabeth Detention Center, an immigration jail in New Jersey: A detainee had fallen, injured his head and become incoherent. Guards had put him in solitary confinement, and late that night, an ambulance had taken him away more dead than alive.

CHICAGO — Thousands of immigrants and activists gathered in cities across the country Thursday to demand comprehensive immigration reform, including citizenship opportunities for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.

Turnout has fallen sharply since the first nationwide rallies in 2006, when more than 1 million people — at least 400,000 in Chicago alone — flooded streets and brought traffic to a standstill.

NEW YORK, May 1 - Immigrants who spent time in detention while fighting deportation filed a federal suit on Wednesday against Michael Chertoff, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, demanding that the agency issue legally enforceable regulations for its detention centers.

No enforceable standards now exist for the immigrant detention system, a rapidly growing conglomeration of county jails, federal centers and privately run prisons across the country.

Fewer immigrants living in the United States are sending money back to their home countries. A survey by the Inter-American Development Bank shows remittances by Hispanic immigrants are flat. But the percentage of immigrants sending money home to Latin America is down dramatically in just two years. The report cites the U.S. economic slowdown and a tougher line on illegal immigrants.

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Apr. 28 - The federal government has admitted that its negligence was responsible for the death of an [undocumented] immigrant who pleaded during 11 months in custody for treatment for a condition that proved to be terminal penile cancer.

Government lawyers made the acknowledgement last week in a suit that Francisco Castaneda filed before he died at his Los Angeles-area home on Feb. 16 at age 36. Doctors had amputated Castaneda's penis a year earlier to try to stop the spread of the cancer.