When the government puts children in a cage, the situation is visible to observers, the children cry, journalists and others find out, and then the world piles on, joining the childrens’ inconvenient voices in protest and dissent. Professionals decry the situation and accuse the government of state-sponsored child abuse.
What is a poor government to do?
Maybe, by quietly deploying psychiatry as a political tool, the government could avoid the spectacle of putting children inside cages, and instead achieve similar control by putting invisible cages inside the children? Unlike highly visible wire or bars that can be photographed by journalists and others, it is difficult for observers to document the internal cages made of neurons bathed in psychotropic chemicals. The resulting sedation and blunting of emotion and thinking limits subjective reports, impairing the ability of children to draw attention to themselves with nuisance emotional displays. Sedation of child immigration defendants would also give the government an additional advantage in the already absurd proceedings in which children are expected to represent themselves in immigration court.
The foregoing scenario is not a mere hypothetical. Psychiatric drugging of detained immigrant children is alleged in a federal lawsuit recently filed in California that details the unconsented and sometimes forcible (including injected) administration of powerful psychotropics.
Make no mistake, what the lawsuit challenges is not voluntary psychiatric treatment — it is chemical restraint imposed for purposes of institutional convenience, punishment, incapacitation, or coercion (in the latter case it is arguably a form of torture).
Many of the drugs named in the California lawsuit have serious potential side-effects and are not FDA-approved for use with children, even for therapeutic purposes. In any case, no drugs can be FDA-approved for chemical restraint in anyone, of any age, because chemical restraint is internationally recognized as a human rights abomination.
The constitution permits forcible psychiatric drugging only under very narrow circumstances, such as restoring the ability to stand trial of detained mentally ill persons accused of a serious felony. But we are talking about immigrant children, not accused felons who have been deemed incompetent by a court, and the children are being drugged without the due process protections including a right to hearing that apply when the government wants to forcibly medicate pre-trial detainees.
Even prisoners convicted of the most serious crimes have constitutional rights to refuse bodily invasion by unwanted “medical” interventions. These rights severely limit the government’s ability to impose forcible medication to a very narrow set of circumstances. What the California lawsuit says is being done to detained immigrant children cannot be constitutionally imposed on convicted felons being held in a Supermax prison.
The law may also permit the government to act in loco parentis under some circumstances, able to exercise proxy consent to medical treatment for children whose parents are unavailable. But chemical restraint is by definition not medical treatment. Even if there is a bona fide condition for which some treatment could be appropriate, that does not automatically justify forcible medication.
The right to consent was affirmed in the Nuremberg Code that formed the basis for the so-called “doctors trials” following WWII of physicians who had engaged in Nazi abuses of “medicine.” It is internationally accepted that involuntary administration of drugs to a child inherently violates basic human rights to liberty and security of person. Even if there is a medical rationale, unless the situation is an absolute imminent emergency, a government that wants to forcibly drug a child should go to court and prove: [a] the existence of a compelling state interest; [b] that forcible medication is the least restrictive alternative, and [c] that forcible medication is in the best interests of the child.
My own incumbent Congressman, the hopefully-soon-to-be-replaced Phil Roe (TN-01,R), is a physician who should know better than to tolerate the situation described in the California lawsuit. Indeed, Roe has written in the past that: “it’s unacceptable that three of the largest mental health care providers in this country are incarceration facilities. Having a mental illness is not a crime.”
That’s right Rep. Roe. And even if mental illness was a crime, forcible medication would not be a constitutionally permissible punishment.
Rep. Roe, you know better than to tolerate medicalized government-sponsored child abuse, but you continue voting automatically as a Trump puppet and, adopting the persona of a playground bully, you have even taken to bragging that you are a self-styled “redneck” and that you are going to “bury” people who disagree with you.
Rep. Roe — what have detained immigrant children done to justify forcible unlawful drugging by our government? Nothing, and you know it. Make it stop. Now. And forever. This cannot wait until the November election.
Plus, after ending the drugging, Congress should look into whether the government has given dysfunctional financial incentives favoring administration of psychiatric drugs to private corporations that manage the detention of immigrant children. Such incentives could be direct, in the form of increased payments, or indirect, in the form of labor or other cost savings associated with handling a population rendered chemically more docile. There could also be conflict-of-interest relationships with pharmaceutical companies whose products are involved.
As for the rest of the Kos community — please contact your representatives and tell them likewise.
