African asylum seekers describe being immobilized for hours in a “stress position” before and during deportation flights, despite serious medical conditions
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A coalition of organizations fighting for racial justice and immigrants’ rights has filed a civil rights complaint condemning ICE’s abuse of an FDA-registered medical device and human restraint called “The WRAP” to threaten, coerce, and punish African asylum seekers prior to and during long-haul deportation flights. The complaint was filed with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) and DHS Office of Inspector General (OIG).
The coalition of groups submitting the complaint include African Communities Together, the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, the Cameroon Advocacy Network, Haitian Bridge Alliance, The UndocuBlack Network, Texas A&M University School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic, and Witness at the Border. The complaint was filed on behalf of three asylum seekers who were subjected to The WRAP before and during deportation flights to Cameroon in October and November 2020. Sarah Towle, an author who uncovered ICE’s abuse of The WRAP, submitted a declaration that includes the accounts of two other individuals subjected to The WRAP. Doubting that ICE will ever be held accountable, they feared speaking out on their own.
According to the complaint, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents immobilized the men with The WRAP, applying it on top of five-point shackles, binding their legs together, and cinching them up at a 45-degree angle, in some cases for hours, which left them shrieking in pain. The tremendous physical and psychological harm inflicted by The WRAP was amplified by underlying medical conditions.
One of the Cameroonians, who suffers from asthma, said he couldn’t breathe while in the WRAP. “I truly felt I was meeting my death in that moment.”
Another complainant, who was not only placed in The WRAP but also hooded, suffers from a heart condition and experienced chest pain after being carried onto the flight in The WRAP. He had to be removed from the flight shortly before takeoff and was treated in an ambulance at the airport before being taken back to the detention center. “I could have had a heart attack and died that day,” he writes. He describes being in The WRAP as “one of the most terrifying and dehumanizing experiences of my life.”
The complaint alleges violations of numerous laws, including the Convention Against Torture, the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the Rehabilitation Act, federal civil rights laws, and state criminal and tort laws, as well as ICE’s own detention standards on the use of restraints.
Interim Policy & Advocacy Director at the UndocuBlack Network, Breanne Palmer said, “Black people in America, including Black immigrants, are familiar with the U.S. government’s unrepentant misuse of medical devices and experimentation on Black bodies. DHS and its component agencies must be held accountable for coercing Black immigrants onto deportation flights with what amounts to a torture device. It is time for all people to be outraged by the myriad ways Black immigrants are targeted by DHS for egregious harm.”
States Nana Gyamfi, Executive Director of Black Alliance for Just Immigration: "BAJI is pleased to join comrade Black immigrant rights organizations and allies, in this effort to stop DHS from continuing to use the draconian WRAP as part of our continuing work to abolish the immigration enforcement, detention, and deportation system. Detention itself is torture and it is unconscionable for this Administration to continue to uphold the additional torture of The WRAP, which is disproportionately used on Black migrants. We call on all who support Black migrants to join in demanding that the Administration immediately end this barbaric practice and free all migrants from detention and into our communities."
Texas A&M Professor of Law and Director of the Law School’s Immigrant Rights Clinic, Fatma Marouf said, “We are requesting that the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and the Office of the Inspector General promptly investigate ICE’s use of The WRAP and bring all parties to the complaint back to the U.S. through humanitarian parole.”
Towle, member of the leadership team of Witness at the Border, states, “ICE was attempting to return all of the complainants to a country where they feared persecution -- a violation of the principle of non-refoulement, paid for with US tax-payer dollars. The public should be outraged. We need unrelenting media support to bring ICE’s routine and egregious abuse of basic human rights to the world’s attention.”
A virtual Q&A with the complainants, Professor Marouf, and Ms. Towle will be held on October 14, 2021, at 3:30 pm ET, as part of the National Day of Action in support of Black Migrants. Members of the media can register for a Zoom link.
Press contact: Nathaniel Hoffman, nathaniel@paleo.media
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