Today's holiday is being recognized around the country with public service events that encourage Americans to get involved in our communities and meet our neighbors. Year-round opportunities exist to meet immigrants living in our towns and cities, and to become a part of the movement for human rights.

A University of Arizona report provides one of the first comprehensive looks at the detention conditions faced by women in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Online activism provides a number of ways for immigrant rights supporters to call for President-Elect Obama and the 111th Congress to restore justice to the immigration system.

Social action website Change.org will present 10 "Ideas for Change" to President-Elect Barack Obama before he takes office this month. Three ideas supporting immigrant rights have made it to the final round of voting. Your vote can help show Obama and other activists that immigrant rights must be a part of the national movement for progressive social change.

Now more than ever, immigrants and refugees rely on quality legal services to secure safety and liberty in the United States. Your gift can reunite a family, free a detained asylum seeker, or even save the life of an individual who faces deportation to a life-threatening situation.

The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, which passed Congress last week, expands protections for unaccompanied immigrant children and victims of trafficking.

Florida International University Professor Erik Camayd-Freixas interviewed 94 detained immigrant workers in Florida this fall before they were deported to Guatemala. Two have provided affidavits detailing the abuse they experienced when they were arrested in the May 2008 federal immigration raid on the Agriprocessors, Inc., meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa.

Most of the men and women arrested in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid of the Agriprocessors, Inc., meatpacking plant in May 2008 have already served their criminal sentences and returned to their native countries. But debate continues over the constitutionality of the aggravated identity theft charges that led to their deportations.

Days before Thanksgiving, groups that have been assisting workers and families in Postville, Iowa, sent out a plea for help in what has become a humanitarian crisis right in the heartland of the United States.

Reports are swirling in the news media that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said immigration reform will be a priority for U.S. Congress in 2009 ... and that achieving a reasonable bill may not be as difficult as many fear.

A bill that allows religious workers to visit immigrants detained in Illinois jails passed unanimously last week in Illinois' House and Senate.

The United States' detention of asylum seekers violates international law.

While last week's presidential election stirred hope among so many Americans, including immigrants, other events in the past few days remind us that the harsh anti-immigrant environment that has evolved in the United States in recent years continues to devastate communities and families.

In 2007, there were about 645,000 foreign-born veterans of the armed forces, accounting for nearly three percent of all surviving U.S. veterans, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is going paperless.

The same week that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Assistant Secretary Julie Myers announced she will resign November 15, the Boston Globe reported that ICE deportations increased 21 percent in fiscal year 2008.