Read It And Weep
There are some things that are so wrong that one doesn't need a degree from Regent University School of Law to recognize them. I ran across one of those wrongs in an article in today's Los Angeles Times. It seems US immigration officials have taken to drugging people whom the INS is trying to deport.
U.S. immigration officials sedated two foreign nationals against their will during failed attempts to deport them in Los Angeles, the men and their attorneys said Tuesday. ...
Dr. Tim Shack, medical director for the Division of Immigration Health Services, said medical escorts, who include nurses and doctors, sedate detainees against their will if they fail to respond to verbal counseling and physical restraints and still present an "imminent risk of danger."
In some cases, the agency gets a court order to administer medication. The drugs are given by escorts who accompany detainees with medical or psychological problems as they are transferred or deported. Medications commonly used are lorazepam, haloperidol, olanzapine and benztropine. [Emphasis added]
On the surface, the INS excuse for the injections appears reasonable. After all, these people are dangerous criminals, right? In at least two cases, wrong. One man was being forcibly deported even though the deportation order had been stayed by the courts while he appealed. When he tried to point that out to his escort, he was given the injection. He wasn't, by the way, being deported after having been convicted of some violent crime. His request for US asylum had been denied and a deportation order issued.
Here's what a couple of legal experts had to say about the practice of drugging the deportees:
"It is inappropriate to give these kinds of injections and put people on aircraft in violation of the federal air regulations that prohibit the transport of drugged individuals," said professor Abraham R. Wagner of Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. "It is not how America's constitutional democracy is supposed to operate in this century."
Another nationally recognized expert on homeland security issues and the law, Paul Finkleman of Albany Law School in New York, was equally harsh in his criticism and discounted the notion that deportees' combativeness or threats of suicide would justify drugging them.
What is especially troubling is that those injections are being given by medical professionals: doctors and nurses. Whatever happened to the pledge to "Do No Harm"?
Read the article. And weep.
U.S. immigration officials sedated two foreign nationals against their will during failed attempts to deport them in Los Angeles, the men and their attorneys said Tuesday. ...
Dr. Tim Shack, medical director for the Division of Immigration Health Services, said medical escorts, who include nurses and doctors, sedate detainees against their will if they fail to respond to verbal counseling and physical restraints and still present an "imminent risk of danger."
In some cases, the agency gets a court order to administer medication. The drugs are given by escorts who accompany detainees with medical or psychological problems as they are transferred or deported. Medications commonly used are lorazepam, haloperidol, olanzapine and benztropine. [Emphasis added]
On the surface, the INS excuse for the injections appears reasonable. After all, these people are dangerous criminals, right? In at least two cases, wrong. One man was being forcibly deported even though the deportation order had been stayed by the courts while he appealed. When he tried to point that out to his escort, he was given the injection. He wasn't, by the way, being deported after having been convicted of some violent crime. His request for US asylum had been denied and a deportation order issued.
Here's what a couple of legal experts had to say about the practice of drugging the deportees:
"It is inappropriate to give these kinds of injections and put people on aircraft in violation of the federal air regulations that prohibit the transport of drugged individuals," said professor Abraham R. Wagner of Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. "It is not how America's constitutional democracy is supposed to operate in this century."
Another nationally recognized expert on homeland security issues and the law, Paul Finkleman of Albany Law School in New York, was equally harsh in his criticism and discounted the notion that deportees' combativeness or threats of suicide would justify drugging them.
What is especially troubling is that those injections are being given by medical professionals: doctors and nurses. Whatever happened to the pledge to "Do No Harm"?
Read the article. And weep.
Labels: Immigration, INS
posted by Diane at 12:07 PM
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