An article in yesterday’s Washington Post has revealed that hundreds of immigrants have been drugged against their will by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), a branch of Homeland Security, since the Bush administration put it in charge of deportation back in 2003. Involuntary chemical sedation without medical justification is banned in some countries and is a violation of some international human rights codes. During the 2007 fiscal year, 53 deportees without mental illness were drugged, 50 injected with Haldol (a powerful anti-psychotic), some also given Ativan (to control anxiety) and Cogentin (to lessen muscle spasms caused by Haldol), which together made the ICE “pre-flight cocktail.” According to Philip Seeman, University of Toronto specialist who has studied the drug and other antipsychotics, giving Haldol to people who aren’t psychotic is “medically and ethically wrong.” Haldol is only used in situations when someone is violent from dementia or an overdose of a drug such as PCP. Furthermore, psychotic patients who receive the drug regularly get 5-15 milligrams a day, while some detainees were given over 30, which is really high for someone who has never Haldol the drug the before. Reportedly, some deportees were so drugged up that they were brought off their planes in wheelchairs. Some countries prohibit such practices, and there are instances when ICE tried to give additional injections in foreign airports between connecting flights and was forbidden to do so by the country’s (e.g. France) authorities. America used to have a similar stance, but, in May 2003, Homeland Security ruled that an ICE detainee “with or without a diagnosed psychiatric condition who displays overt or threatening aggressive behavior . . . may be considered a combative detainee and can be sedated if appropriate under the circumstances.” While it may be an infringement on individual cognitive liberty, the freedom to choose how we think and what we use (or don’t) to modify our brain chemistry, the government retains this dubious right.

Careless Detention: Some Detainees Drugged for Deportation, WashingtonPost.com