Drugged up: insane asylum seekers?

• Author: Howley, Kerry
• Position: Immigrants' psychological disorder - Brief article

IN DECEMBER 2004, immigration officials pinned down asylum seeker Raymond Soeoth in his holding cell, pulled down his pants, and forced a syringe into his buttocks. The 38-year-old Christian pastor, who was fleeing religious persecution in Islamic Indonesia, says he had no idea what he was being injected with at the time. His medical records later revealed he had been given Haldol, a powerful psychotropic used in the treatment of schizophrenia and delirium.

Soeoth was about to be deported, and immigration officials say he was forcibly sedated because he had threatened to commit suicide and told officials he wouldn't board the plane. Soeoth denies both claims, saying he had calmly refused a tranquilizer when told he would be shipped back to Indonesia. In any case, Haldol is a treatment for psychosis, not suicidal thoughts. When officials tried to drag the drugged Soeoth onto a commercial plane for deportation, airport security refused to let him board.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California has filed a class action lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security over the forced sedation of people facing deportation, a practice the ACLU calls "routine." Soeoth is joined in the suit by Amadou Diouf, a Senegalese man with no history of mental illness who says...