Hundreds Of Deportees Said To Have Been Drugged Without Reason

Thursday, May 15, 2008 at 12:05AM
TheSpook

From the Frontrunner Continuing its series on immigration detainee healthcare, the Washington Post (5/14, A1, Goldstein, Priest,) reports in a 5,000 word front-page article on the government's use of "dangerous psychotropic drugs" to keep deportees "sedated during the trip back to their home country, according to medical records, internal documents and interviews with people who have been drugged. The government's forced use of antipsychotic drugs, in people who have no history of mental illness, includes dozens of cases in which the 'pre-flight cocktail,' as a document calls it, had such a potent effect that federal guards needed a wheelchair to move the slumped deportee onto an airplane." The Post says it has identified 250 cases "in which the government has, without medical reason, given drugs meant to treat serious psychiatric disorders to people it has shipped out of the United States since 2003 -- the year the Bush administration handed the job of deportation to the Department of Homeland Security's new Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE."

Article originally appeared on (http://brownwatch.com/).