How about we stop drugging deportees and drug citizens instead?

It’s always interesting when disparate U.S. policy issues come together. Like, say, illegal immigration and the War on Drugs. No, we’re not catching drug dealers at the border or anything like that, we’re injecting deportees full of the good stuff before we ship them out.

“ACLU Seeks to Stop Drugging of Deportees”

SANTA ANA, Calif. – Indonesian immigrant Raymond Soeoth says he was awaiting deportation when four officers stormed into his holding cell, wrestled his pants off and pinned him down for an injection of anti-psychotic drugs.

Soeoth, an assistant pastor and cabdriver with no history of psychological problems, suffered extreme dizziness, paranoia and sleeplessness for two days before the medication wore off, he says.

Attorneys for Soeoth (pronounced sow-UTH’) and another immigrant filed a motion in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Tuesday urging a federal judge to stop the forced sedation after learning of a third deportee who was reportedly injected with anti-psychotic drugs at a Santa Ana facility two weeks ago.

The motion is part of an earlier lawsuit that alleges the practice may constitute torture and violates both the Bill of Rights and federal law regarding the medical treatment of detainees. The suit seeks class-action status.

“Before, I just heard the rumors that people can be deported and they give them an injection, but now it’s come to myself. I cannot believe it, but they did it to me,” Soeoth said in a telephone interview as he waited for fares at Los Angeles International Airport. “They treated me like a criminal. I just count on my friends in the church and we keep praying for them, so that they don’t do that to other people.”

Immigration officials have said Soeoth told them he would commit suicide if he was deported, something Soeoth denies. Soeoth fled Indonesia in 1999 and sought political asylum; his request was rejected in 2004 but is being appealed.

The new court filing comes after Senate testimony last month revealed that 56 deportees were given psychotropic drugs between Oct. 1, 2006, and April 30, 2007. Thirty-three had no history of psychological problems but were given the medicine because of “combative behavior,” said Julie Myers, assistant secretary of homeland security for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

You know, once you’ve come to accept that your country tortures people, the idea of drugging up deportees barely seems bad at all. They could be being renditioned to Romania for months of beatdowns, after all. Of course, it seems like a waste of anti-psychotic drugs, though, which really seem to be needed more for the extreme-right that so often dominates political discourse.

–WKW

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