ICE deported men back to Cameroon and Uganda restrained in "the Wrap" for hours

[Demovictory9]

When Godswill entered the San Ysidro Port of Entry in the summer of 2019 to request asylum from his home country of Cameroon, he thought he had finally reached a safe haven.

But what he says happened in U.S. custody, particularly as he was being deported back to Cameroon, left him feeling betrayed.

Before Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials put him on a deportation flight in November 2020, they cinched him into a restraining device called The WRAP, which held his legs tightly straight and together while pulling his head and chest down towards his knees at a sharp angle, Godswill said. Because of his vulnerable situation, he asked to be identified only as the pseudonym given to him in the complaint.

“It’s something I would never wish for my enemy,” Godswill said in an interview. “It is humiliating. It is demoralizing. It is a high degree of torture.”



The complaint also raises the question of whether the treatment was motivated by racism. So far, the only deportees that advocates have identified as having experienced The WRAP were Black asylum seekers from African countries.

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The WRAP, created by California-based Safe Restraints Inc., was designed to allow law enforcement officers to restrain someone without holding the person face down, according to the company’s president and CEO Charles Hammond. It is meant to be used to hold someone upright at a 90-degree angle or leaning back slightly.

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He recalled some officers pushing his back so his head would go down further towards his legs as they tightened the straps. He waited on the tarmac while other deportees boarded the plane. Then the officers carried him “like a bunch of wood,” and “dumped” him onto a set of three seats on the plane, he said. He had to travel sideways because of the device.

“I cried like I’ve never cried before. I cried like a child,” Godswill said. “I believed they were killing me.”

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/immigration/story/2021-10-13/ice-torture-asylum-seeker-deportation

[kimbutgar]

1. Gee I wonder who was the president when this happened?

And wow a white man!!!!!

[Iggo]

2. Cops.

They’re not winning unless they’re hurting someone.

[magicarpet]

3. Isn't Fascism fun,... if you are a Nazi.