The hunt for the lone surviving suspect from the Paris terrorist attacks led to the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek, where police Friday finally shot, captured and arrested Salah Abdeslam. President Obama called French President Francois Hollande and Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel to congratulate them on the news. Grantee Just Security used the occasion to call anew for greater efforts to connect to and understand Muslim youth as a way of potentially heading off more alienation and radicalization. 

Meanwhile, the US stepped up its bombing campaign against ISIS in Afghanistan, deploying three times the number of bombs and missiles in January and February as it did in the first two months of 2015.

President Obama pushed the Senate to take up his nominee for the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland, taking to NPR to make the case for hearings, noting the irony involved in opponents who refuse to even consider the nomination who “claim to be people who want fidelity to the Constitution, respect for our founders’ intentions.” The NRA came out against the nominee, and Senate GOP leaders remained defiant, as progressive advocates readied for a “day of action” on Monday, with extensive rallies in states where Republican senators face tough re-election fights.

Analysts found cross-cutting gender dynamics at work between the Republican and Democratic frontrunners. Hillary Clinton’s results reflect a significant lack of support among white men, while a new Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that half of women surveyed had a “very unfavorable” feeling about Donald Trump.

The Obama administration is continuing its efforts to deport immigrant families and unaccompanied children who came to the US amid a migratory surge from Central America in 2014, despite strong opposition from a wide array of immigrant rights, civil rights and faith-based organizations. According to an AP report, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has since October sent home more than 800 immigrants who arrived as unaccompanied children, and “other formerly unaccompanied child immigrants with pending deportation orders have been detained in preparation for deportation.”

The House voted to file an amicus brief in US v Texas, siding with the Longhorn State in arguing that President Obama exceeded his authority with his immigration executive actions. The Supreme Court is expected to announce its decision later this spring. Grantee America’s Voice denounced the vote as a stunt proving that the entire case is “nothing but a political exercise.”

Advocates circulated a piece by Dr. Maha Hilal of the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms, taking the damage done by “the narrative of the Muslim other.”

Among other grantee activities:

--The American Constitution Society did its part in the network push to persuade senators to #doyourjob in filling the vacant Scalia Supreme Court seat, publishing a piece pointing out that even an unelected president (Gerry Ford) appointed a justice to the high court.

--The Southern Poverty Law Center won a lawsuit against a Gulf Coast seafood company, recovering guest worker wages lost when their pay was adjusted downward below minimum wage. SPLC hailed it as a significant victory for guest worker rights.

--The Center for New Community, the SPLC and NILC were among 19 groups pushing for the opportunity to file a brief urging dismissal of a suit by the Alabama governor to bar the federal government from resettling refugees in the state.

--The National Immigration Law Center publicized a new story in the Atlantic about the benefits to states’ economies when undocumented immigrants are able to receive a college education, drawing on earlier research from NILC, CAP and others.

-- OSF grantee Puente Arizona (along with FFF grantees GA Latino Alliance for Human Rights in GA and Voces de la Frontera in Wisconsin) spoke against state-level anti-immigrant policies.  The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that it has seen trends of restrictive immigrant-related proposals in the last several months.