The ACLU/SC has learned that the U.S. government forcibly sedates immigrants to make it easier to deport them. Raymond Soeoth and Amadou Diouf described how medical staff working for the Department of Homeland Security injected them with powerful drugs against their will.
"These druggings were medically unnecessary, immoral, and dangerous," said ACLU/SC staff attorney Ahilan Arulanantham, who represents Soeoth and Diouf. "Officers sedated these perfectly sane men, apparently just to silence them."
The ACLU/SC is aggressively investigating the druggings. Neither man was deported, and both were recently released from a federal facility after more than two years, thanks to ACLU/SC actions. A judge found that their lengthy detention violated federal rules.
The druggings were first reported in the Daily Journal, a legal newspaper, and later in the Los Angeles Times.
Pictured: Raymond Soeoth, an asylum-seeker from Indonesia who was forcibly sedated by U.S. immigration officials, with his wife, Cindy.
