Jose Maldonado Placensia, a fugitive alien, was arrested March 31st and is currently in ICE custody pending removal proceedings. During this targeted enforcement action, only one arrest was made. No one was arrested, stopped or detained on or near school grounds.

But less than four hours later, Walls e-mailed the following statement, attributed to ICE Director of Public Affairs Brian Hale:

ICE is concerned by reports about the manner in which this operation was conducted, and is conducting an internal review of the facts surrounding it.

While a preliminary analysis suggests that certain requirements were followed, elements of the operation appear to have been inconsistent with policy and our standards and priorities.

ICE officers are required to follow a policy that prohibits operations near schools unless approved by headquarters or otherwise based on exigent circumstances. It is not clear that this policy was appropriately followed in this matter.

In addition, one of the targets may not have been within the agency’s stated enforcement priorities.

If internal review results in a finding that procedures were violated, appropriate steps will be taken. ICE will work closely with the local community to address any concerns arising from this matter.

The change in statements was greeted with some praised by Ryan Bates, director of the Alliance for Immigrant Rights and Reforms:

While we are encouraged that ICE will be reviewing the incident at Hope Academy, we stand by our demands that the officers and agents responsible be identified and disciplined. ICE must be held accountable for violating their own policies and the simple human decency.

Though ICE has begun to address the events at Hope Academy, they have yet to address the warrant-less, illegal search of Rogelio and Maria Perez’s home.

This illegal search, conducted after Mr. Perez denied ICE permission to enter, resulted in the detention of his wife, who is six months pregnant.

While in immigration detention, she was denied proper medical attention and access to medication.

There is a pattern of abuse by Detroit ICE, and we stand by our demands for justice and accountability.

Meanwhile, undocumented youth who were arrested Tuesday during a protest in Atlanta, were supported by activists in a candlelight vigil in Detroit Wednesday night. The youth are being held in jail in Atlanta on $1,800 bonds, says One Michigan spokesperson Samantha Nawrocki.

The youth were protesting state laws which prohibit undocumented residents from attending college or university. Georgia was selected because it recently passed such a law, which is expected to go into effect in the fall.

Relatives in Istanbul mourn on the coffins of victims of Israel's raid of ships bound for Gaza. (Zuma)

On Thursday, the world learned that one of the activists killed this week by Israeli commandos was a U.S. citizen. On Capitol Hill, the news seemed to raise no eyebrows at all.

Furkan Dogan, a New York-born student living in Turkey, was one of nine activists killed, according to numerous reports, when Israeli soldiers on Monday boarded the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara, a ship carrying aid supplies to the Gaza Strip in defiance of an Israeli blockade. The 19-year-old had been shot five times — including four shots to the head.

[Congress1] The raid has stirred a storm of criticism in much of Europe and the Middle East, not least because the soldiers had boarded the vessel — and five smaller ships — in international waters. Yet since news of Dogan’s identity and U.S. citizenship made headlines, the reaction from Washington lawmakers has been mostly silence — an odd response in the wake of such a high-profile episode.

Indeed, while a few Democratic leaders responded earlier in the week to the initial raid — most either defending Israel or cautiously urging an investigation into the incident — none reacted to the more recent news of Dogan’s death. Instead, congressional leaders seem ready to let the White House handle the thorny diplomacy of confronting the ally that’s just killed an American.

Calls to the offices of a number of Democratic leaders — including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.), Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry (Mass.) and House Foreign Affairs Chairman Howard Berman (Calif.) — were not returned Thursday.

The episode highlights the delicacy of Washington’s relationship with Israel, the only recognized democracy in the Middle East, and one that the United States supports with billions of dollars in military aid each year. It also creates a dilemma for the Obama administration, which is now forced to walk a thin line between the domestic pro-Israel crowd — which holds tremendous sway (and lobbies with millions of dollars) in Washington — and foreign allies calling for a more concrete condemnation of the deadly attack.

Obama on Thursday continued to approach the issue gingerly, telling CNN’s Larry King that the episode was “tragic” and the deaths “unnecessary.” But the president also stopped short of condemning Israel, instead reiterating his previous call for the country to cooperate in an investigation.

“I think the Israelis are going to agree to that — an investigation of international standards — because they recognize that this can’t be good for Israel’s long-term security,” Obama said.

Earlier in the day, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs had dodged questions about whether the news of Dogan’s death alters the administration’s diplomatic position. Still, the death of a U.S. citizen likely puts a greater pressure on Washington’s political leaders to take a stand at some point — a dynamic not unlike that surrounding the 2003 death of Rachel Corrie, an American human rights activist killed in Gaza by an Israeli bulldozer as she protested the demolition of a Palestinian’s home.

Meanwhile, Israeli leaders have adamantly defended Monday’s raid as a necessary move to uphold the blockade and ensure that no weapons were smuggled into Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas, an Islamic group that advocates for the elimination of Israel. As for the shootings, Israeli officials contend that the soldiers were simply acting in self defense after being attacked by activists on the Mavi Marmara.

It’s an argument being echoed by Israeli’s staunchest backers on Capitol Hill.

“I strongly support Israel’s right to defend itself, and the right of Israel’s naval commandos, who were executing a legal mission, to defend themselves by using force when they were brutally attacked,” Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.) said this week. “I strongly condemn the action of those who assaulted the Israeli troops and made the use of violence by Israeli troops necessary in self-defense.”

Yet those participating in the aid flotilla have a different tale to tell. And Dogan wasn’t the only American taking part. Also aboard the ships were Hedy Epstein, a St. Louis-based author and Holocaust survivor; Ann Wright, a 29-year veteran of the U.S. Army; and Edward Peck, former U.S. ambassador to Mauritania and deputy director of the White House anti-terror task force under the Reagan administration.

In an interview with Salon on Thursday, Peck argued that those claiming the Israeli soldiers were simply acting in self defense have “got it backwards.”

“There are civilians, men and woman, on a Turkish-flagged vessel, in international waters. And here comes a group of heavily armed … guys who are going to take over the ship by force and then take it to Israel, where the passengers don’t want to go,” Peck said. “And so they pick up deck chairs and other things to fight off these heavily armed — and by the way, masked — commandos, and somehow they become the attackers.

“So that,” Peck said, “depresses me a little bit.”

As The Washington Post reported, the Nevada chapter of the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, had planned a potluck dinner at its Las Vegas office Tuesday night to celebrate the 80,000 newly registered voters its staff had signed up in Clark County.

Before that dinner could start, however, Nevada officials raided the ACORN office, removing 20 boxes of documents and eight computer hard drives. The state officials claimed that workers for the community-organizing group, who are paid by the hour, had submitted almost 300 voter registration cards that included names and addresses that don’t exist in Nevada, or are duplicates of previous registrations.

A former ACORN employee said she started making up names to fill out the registration forms to avoid having to work in the heat outside. Workers are expected to sign up 20 new voters per shift.

As I noted in my post yesterday, Republicans have been aggressively attacking ACORN for alleged voter fraud, and using any false or erroneous registrations submitted by the group to claim there’s a problem of widespread voter fraud that’s tainting the elections.

But not only are the numbers of illegitimate registrations found tiny in comparison to the 1.3 million valid new registrations the group has signed up, but neither the Nevada GOP, nor anyone else, has presented any evidence that these duplicate or false registrations have any impact whatsoever on the validity of the vote.

After all, unless poll workers are sleeping on the job, no one can show up and vote twice. And there’s no evidence, and likewise no charges, that anyone is showing up at the polls and impersonating the nonexistent voters that have been signed up.

Still, ACORN has been making huge efforts to try to prevent this sort of fraud — cooperating with local authorities by flagging suspicious registrations and having workers individually call new registrants to make sure their registrations are legitimate.

Of course, the group has good reason to cooperate with local authorities to prevent fraud. After all, even assuming the Republicans’ allegations against ACORN workers are true, the only fraud that’s actually been perpetrated was on ACORN itself -– not on the government or the voters of Nevada, or anywhere else.