Friday, October 23, 2020



Prosecute ICE

We knew that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement was a moral void: they run concentration camps, and forcibly separate children from their parents. And now they're outright torturing people:

US immigration officers allegedly tortured Cameroonian asylum seekers to force them to sign their own deportation orders, in what lawyers and activists describe as a brutal scramble to fly African migrants out of the country in the run-up to the elections.

Many of the Cameroonian migrants in a Mississippi detention centre refused to sign, fearing death at the hands of Cameroonian government forces responsible for widespread civilian killings, and because they had asylum hearings pending.

According to multiple accounts, detainees were threatened, choked, beaten, pepper-sprayed and threatened with more violence to make them sign. Several were put in handcuffs by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers, and their fingerprints were taken forcibly in place of a signature on documents called stipulated orders of removal, by which the asylum seekers waive their rights to further immigration hearings and accept deportation.

Torture for bureaucratic convenience is a new level of evil even for the US, and it shows how racist and corrupt this organisation has become. As for how to fix it, prosecuting everyone involved, from the political leaders and high-level managers who encourage these abuses down to the guards who actually do the dirty work would be a good start.