Thread: LA judge rules that drugged deportee lawsuit can proceed

LA judge rules that drugged deportee lawsuit can proceed
Thursday, November 1, 2007
(11-01) 17:08 PDT Los Angeles (AP) --

A federal judge denied a government request to dismiss a lawsuit filed by two men who alleged they were forcibly drugged by immigration officials attempting to deport them.

U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr.'s Monday decision allows the civil lawsuit brought by Amadou Diouf and Raymond Soeoth against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to go forward.

The two men said officials at a San Pedro detention center forcibly injected them with mind-altering drugs that are typically used to treat psychotic patients.

Ahilan Arulanantham, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California who represented the men, hailed the decision.

"This is a very significant ruling because this means we can now get information from the government that will reveal the truth about this awful practice of forcibly drugging immigrants," Arulanantham said.

Government officials declined to comment directly on the ruling, citing the pending litigation. But Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, defended the federal medical escort program, which uses public health doctors and nurses to deport foreigners with medical or psychological problems.

"Medical sedation is only used as a last resort and rarely done," she said.

Diouf, a Senegalese immigrant, said in the lawsuit he was drugged in early 2006 by a deportation officer despite a pending stay issued by an appeals court.

Soeoth, an Indonesian Christian minister who fled his homeland and applied for asylum in the United States, said he was injected at the detention center in December 2004.

The ACLU has filed Freedom of Information Act requests for details on the medical escort program, but Arulanantham said the government has not provided any documents.

Some legal experts said Hatter's ruling is significant because immigrants face legal hurdles when suing over detention practices.

"The government is consistently taking the position that detention standards are not subject to enforcement," said Hiroshi Motomura, who teaches immigration law at University of California, Los Angeles. "But this ruling signifies that there are limits on what the government can do."

Earlier this year, a Homeland Security Department official told Congress that 56 immigrants were forcibly drugged during deportations carried out in 2006 and early 2007.

The official said 33 of those immigrants "received medication because of combative behavior, with the imminent risk to self or other."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... 014&sc=612

WHY would they want to drug anyone who was NOT combative?? Makes no sense! Just the good ole ACLU protecting the thugs and thieves of the world.

Has there been any cases in recent memory where the ACLU has actually done something for an American citizen that was right and wasn't some wacko case?