Every day seems to bring news of more atrocities committed in our so-called justice system. On the heels of news reports about some 60+ people dying in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, we now learn that other immigrants have been drugged with powerful antipsychotic and anti-anxiety medications in the name of creating docile deportees. Individuals with no history of mental illness have been injected with dangerous psychotropics and returned to their home countries in such a drugged state that they are unable to walk or function for days upon their return. Hence those we detain are parted from the drugs they need, sometimes with fatal results, or injected with drugs they don’t need. This process violates established human rights codes, and, as the Washington Post article notes, those escorting the deportees were not allowed to inject any additional doses of the drugs while on layovers in some countries.
This abominable treatment reminds me of the abuses our government highlighted in those Cold War propaganda films, only now we play the starring role. There is absolutely no excuse for this, least of all the fact that we are detaining immigrants who are here without papers. Until we express as much outrage over U. S. corporations crossing our border and decimating the economies of our Southern neighbors we have no room to condemn and abuse those who migrate north in search of survival.
