Tales from Stasiland: Homeland Security’s Syringe

By Scott Horton

National Public Radio reported yesterday on the Department of Homeland Security’s use of drugs in connection with deportation. It cites the case of Rev. Raymond Soeoth, a Christian minister who fled to the United States from Indonesia in 1999 seeking asylum and claiming persecution because of his religious convictions and Senegalese émigré Amadou Diouf.

Soeoth says that an agent asked him if he needed medication to relax him for the trip. He replied that he did not. But a few hours later, says Soeoth, several agents came into his cell. One of them, he says, was a medic. He was holding a syringe.”Two officers grabbed my legs, two officers grabbed my hands. Then they opened my pants. And then I said, ‘Why are you guys doing this to me?’ and I was crying and crying, and I said ‘Why? I’m not animal.’”

Soeoth says the medic injected him in the buttocks. He says he lost consciousness on the way to the airport. The deportation was eventually cancelled because agents failed to notify airline security. According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement medical records, Soeth was injected with Haldol, a very powerful sedative.

Diouf’s account is nearly identical.