Immigrants

The group was discussing Britney Spears and everyone wanted to know the same thing: How do you say "paparazzi" in Gujarati? They settled on the term phota levavara, or photo takers. "I figured that to bring Gujarati into my everyday life, it would have to fit the things that I do," like discussing pop culture with friends, said Chitavan Patel, who founded the Gujarati language group two years ago on meetup.com.

Immigrants detained for more than six months without a bond hearing can sue the federal government in a class action aimed at getting a court to recognize their right to a swifter appearance before a judge, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday. In a case brought by civil rights groups, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court decision denying the group class status for their lawsuit. "This is a huge victory for immigrants who have been held in prolonged, indefinite detention without the most basic element of due process: a hearing to determine if their detention is justified," said Ahilan Arulanantham, director of immigrants' rights and national security for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

Najibullah Zazi, 24, drives passengers to and from Denver International Airport for a living. He has also worked at a fast-food restaurant and sold coffee and doughnuts, said his attorney, describing Zazi as a hardworking immigrant who hopes to become an American citizen, not a bomb-making terrorist suspect with a possible link to Al Qaeda. FBI agents questioned Zazi on Wednesday and Thursday and executed search warrants at his apartment in the Denver suburb of Aurora, as well as the nearby home of his aunt.

For years Kai Chen enjoyed the good life of a professional basketball player in China, playing on the national team and traveling around the world. But he was never happy representing a government that he said tore his family apart and was responsible for millions of deaths in his country. So after Chen married U.S. foreign exchange student Susan Gruenegerg in 1981, the couple moved to the United States to start a new life together. Chen eventually earned a degree in political science from UCLA and has since become a passionate anticommunist crusader.

In her one-bedroom apartment in the Pico-Union district, garment worker Julia Rodriguez lives surrounded by young readers. Her oldest child, 10-year-old Santos, is giving Harry Potter a try. Nine-year-old Wendy devours girl-detective stories. Even her youngest, 6-year-old Marlyn, zips through early-reader books. "Tim spins," Marlyn reads from her book. "Tim spins his hat." Julia listens to her daughter and beams. Until recently, the 34-year-old mother of three couldn't read the simplest sentence in any language.

Gilda Ghanipour has spent the last nine years on the run. Abandoned by her Muslim family for converting to Christianity, she has shuttled from one address to the next, terrified of being deported to her native Iran, where apostasy can be punished by death. Last year, Ghanipour stumbled upon a retired immigration judge and his Pepperdine University Law School students, who championed her quest for asylum. Ghanipour won the case. But she doesn't know it. The devoutly religious woman vanished shortly before the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services delivered on her dream at the end of August.

Hundreds of legal immigrants in Southern California who have been waiting years for citizenship will have their cases resolved as a result of a settlement with the federal government, attorneys announced Monday. The immigrants were stuck in lengthy delays as they waited for the FBI to complete their security name-checks and for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to approve their citizenship applications. The settlement, approved Friday in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, sets a six-month deadline for the government to decide on hundreds of citizenship applications from Los Angeles and surrounding counties.

The former chief executive of the nation's largest kosher meatpacking plant is facing dozens of additional charges of fraud and money laundering in a new federal indictment. Former Agriprocessors CEO Sholom Rubashkin is being held on 12 counts of bank fraud, harboring illegal immigrants, document fraud and identity theft after a May 2008 federal raid at the Agriprocessors plant that netted nearly 400 illegal immigrant workers -- including 18 juveniles. The new indictment adds 86 counts of bank fraud, money laundering and violating an order of the U.S. secretary of Agriculture.

Italian police have arrested three men suspected of beating and setting on fire an Indian immigrant who was sleeping on a train station bench near Rome, investigators said. The attack on the 35-year-old man Sunday in Nettuno sparked outrage in Italy and fueled a debate on attitudes toward immigrants. The man has severe burns over 40% of his body, said Dr. Paolo Palombo of Sant'Eugenio hospital in Rome.

A Jamaican woman who lost her American husband in the 2003 Staten Island Ferry crash cannot remain in the U.S. because they were not married long enough, the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled, 2-1. Osserritta Robinson, 31, of Mahwah, N.J., is one of about 170 immigrants who have been denied residency status because of what some call the "widow penalty": a U.S. law that requires an immigrant to be married for two years to remain in the country...