U.S. Coast Guard operating secret floating prisons in Pacific Ocean

[douglas9]

If you've followed the War on Terror at all, you're almost certainly familiar with the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — a U.S. prison that exists outside the realm of the U.S. justice system.

Now, it turns out, there's a secret U.S. detention system in the War on Drugs, too — and this one is aboard U.S. Coast Guard cutters sailing in the Pacific Ocean.

In an effort to staunch the flow of cocaine and other hard drugs from South America to Central America and points north, Coast Guard cutters have been deployed farther and farther from the shore in the Pacific Ocean. When these cutters capture a boat carrying drugs, the smugglers are brought onto the ships and kept shackled to the deck, sometimes outside in the elements, until the Coast Guard makes arrangements for them to be transported back to the U.S. for trial.

But this isn't a wait of just a few hours or days. Often, these waits can last weeks or months, according to new reporting from The New York Times. Coast Guard officials say they can do this because the drug smugglers aren't under arrest until they reach U.S. shores, but some of the worst cases are drawing criticism even from Coast Guard officials.

Seth Freed Wessler reported this story for The Times. He says a combination of U.S. agreements with Latin American countries and the U.S. Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act allows the US to take this action. Wessler spoke with The World's Carol Hills about his reporting and these "floating Guantánamos" on the Pacific Ocean.

http://www.freep.com/story/news/world/2017/11/28/u-s-coast-guard-operating-secret-floating-prisons-pacific-ocean/900462001/

[Angry Dragon]

1. Learn something new everyday

[Nitram]

2. As far as I can tell, this article does not describe "secret floating prisons."

They are detaining suspected smugglers and holding them aboard Coast Guard cutters until they return to port. In the Pacific Ocean, while they are still on patrol, that could be months.

[Sunlei]

3. Trump's chief of staff, General John Kelly, he played a key role in expanding the reach of the Coast

Trump's chief of staff, General John Kelly, he played a key role in expanding the reach of the Coast Guard in this way.

Well, John Kelly was in charge of Southern Command, the Department of Defense area of operation in Latin America that's in charge of managing the drug war in Latin America. He was the head of Southern Command between 2012 and 2016 then retired. Under the Trump administration, he became head of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Coast Guard.

On two occasions he has had a role in these operations. And John Kelly has really been a proponent of the idea. He's called drug smuggling in Central America an existential threat to the United States. And the idea that we need to push our borders outward farther and farther away from our actual borders in order to defend the homeland, that's led to this effort to interdict drugs far, far away from the United States in places where drug smugglers actually really have very little idea where their drugs are headed. So, Johnny Arcentales and the other men that I've spoken to know, they're not thinking about where these drugs are going. The drugs are moving from South America to Central America as far as they're concerned. It's out of their control after that, but we're arresting people in international waters, often on foreign boats, thousands of miles from the United States.

more details in https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-11-24/us-coast-guard-operating-floating-prisons-pacific-ocean-outside-us-legal?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=The%20Scan%20%20Nov%2027&utm_content=The%20Scan%20%20Nov%2027+CID_2910d397057a2d2f05ebb8dbe97a5f24&utm_so


for some reason they send the men to only Florida courts and that's why they hold them for months, even though a port or airport is close- its always Florida Courts and Florida "Federal Prisons"

[FiveGoodMen]

4. What purpose is served by the inhumane conditions?

They've already caught the (alleged) offenders. Why make them suffer?

[Igel]

5. Convenience and legality.

Rather than set up a separate shuttle operation to the shore, leave them there.

And how do you handle them administratively? They're not formally under arrest until they're charged. So we'd bring smugglers into the US, they'd have no warrant for their arrest until all the paperwork cleared, so they'd be sprung from jail.

Sort of importing the sort of people that Obama said we wanted to deport.