New reports from the Washington Post indicate the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an agency of the Department of Homeland Security, has been forcing anti-psychotic drugs into detainees it seeks to deport - simply for the purpose of "chemically restraining" them during transport:

The U.S. government has injected hundreds of foreigners it has deported with dangerous psychotropic drugs against their will to keep them 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 ICE doesn't exactly have a clean record, either. The Washington Post has " identified 83 deaths of immigration detainees between March 2003, when the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency was created, and March 2008." On May 1st, Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) introduced H.R. 5950, the Detainee Basic Medical Care Act of 2008 to improve conditions for those detained for immigration offences.

The Constitution doesn't just protect American citizens - it protects everyone. ACLU National's Immigrant's Rights Project writes:

In decisions spanning more than a century, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the Constitution's guarantees apply to every person within U.S. borders, including "aliens whose presence in this country is unlawful." On the other hand, the Court has said that when the federal government uses its broad powers to supervise immigration into this country, it can exercise those powers in ways that discriminate on the basis of "alienage." In other words, the government has the power to decide who to let into the country and under what circumstances. But once here, even undocumented immigrants have the right to freedom of speech and religion, the right to be treated fairly, the right to privacy, and the other fundamental rights U.S. citizens enjoy.

The forced drugging of deportees, simply for the convenience of transport, is completely inappropriate - and deeply unconstitutional. While the Supreme Court has ruled that some mentally ill defendents may be forcibly given drugs in order to render them competent to stand trial (SELL v. UNITED STATES), the Court has always indicated that such drugging must be medically appropriate for the person involved:

These two cases, Harper and Riggins, indicate that the Constitution permits the Government involuntarily to administer antipsychotic drugs to a mentally ill defendant facing serious criminal charges in order to render that defendant competent to stand trial, but only if the treatment is medically appropriate, is substantially unlikely to have side effects that may undermine the fairness of the trial, and, taking account of less intrusive alternatives, is necessary significantly to further important governmental trial-related interests.
(Italics mine).

Sometimes it's hard to wrap one's mind around all the different ways this administration has ignored, denigrated, overruled, shredded and spat upon our Constitution. But forcing anti-psychotic drug cocktails into those under our jurisdiction is simply shameful, unamerican and illegal, not to mention an outreageous departure from medical ethics According to the group Physicians for Human Rights:

"There is no acceptable use for mind-altering drugs in interrogation, so any use of medication to aid in interrogation of detainees in US custody would be experimental. As such, it would be a clear violation of international codes and domestic law in place since the doctors' trials at Nuremberg," said Dr. Scott A. Allen, MD, a medical advisor to PHR and Co-Director of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights at Brown University ... "Additionally, use of medication as a restraint is unethical. Even therapeutic use of forced medication under US military regulations is not ethically permissible in the absence of informed consent except for the rarest of cases, such as treatment for a highly infectious disease like tuberculosis."

The Helsinki Declaration and the Nuremberg Code establish standards for the protection of individual rights in human experimentation, which are largely codified in US law. They absolutely prohibit human experimentation without the consent of the subject. These ethical rules, the Nuremberg Code in particular, were created in response to human experiments conducted by German health professionals on prisoners during World War II. The doctors involved in those human rights abuses were later convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Join the ACLU's call to investigate the use and authorization of torture under the Bush Administration.

Call your representative and ask them to become a co-sponsor for the Detainee Basic Medical Care Act of 2008 (HR 5950) introduced by Rep. Zoe Lofgren. The Capitol Hill Switchboard is (202)224-3121.