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ACLU Sues U.S. to Stop Alleged Drugging of Immigrants
A civil rights group sued the U.S. government on Tuesday seeking to end what it said was a policy of drugging some immigrants facing deportation proceedings. The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California brought the federal class action suit on behalf of two immigrants, whom it said were given powerful psychotropic drugs during deportation proceedings in 2004 and 2006. The ACLU said the immigrants, one an Indonesian national seeking political asylum in the United States and the other a Senegalese married to a U.S. citizen, were forcibly injected with the medication in violation of the law. "Our constitution does not allow the government to treat immigrants like animals," ACLU staff attorney Ahilan Arulanantham said in a news release.
Story Continues Below "Injecting people who are not mentally ill with psychotropic drugs is illegal, immoral and medically inappropriate," he added. Virginia Kice, the ICE spokeswoman in Los Angeles, declined to comment on the lawsuit. She said decisions about immigrants' medical needs during detention were made by U.S. Public Health Service doctors, and that sedatives were only administered to them if authorized by a court. "ICE does not involuntarily premedicate or sedate a detainee solely to facilitate removal efforts unless authorized by a court order," Kice told Reuters by telephone. The ACLU said both men, Raymond Soeoth and Amadou Diouf, spent approximately two years in U.S. immigration custody. They were subsequently released and remain in the United States. The suit alleges Soeoth was held down during deportation proceedings in December 2004 and injected with Haldol, a drug used to treat agitation in severe psychiatric disorders. It said that Diouf was injected with an unidentified psychotropic drug after he attempted to speak to the captain of an aircraft bound for Senegal, during an attempt to deport him from Los Angeles in February 2006. Last year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported 195,024 illegal immigrants, amid a bitter public debate over how to deal with 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. Earlier this month, a bill backed by U.S. President George. W. Bush that sought to give most illegal immigrants legal status, while toughening border security and workplace enforcement, failed to gain traction in Congress. © Reuters 2007. Editor's note:
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