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They threw away insulin as "potentially lethal or nonessential"? I don't understand this. Did they replace the thrown-away medication with other, whose provenance they could check or did they just leave those people without it? For diabetics, that would mean they just left them to die, no?

Edit: to clarify I don't believe that diabetics were left to die without insulin and I sure haven't heard anything like that in the news. I'm wondering what is the process in place for people with chronic diseases.

the cruelty is, quite obvious by now, the point.
Americans by and large .. hate people who are different than them, and despite it's significant percentage in the general population, there is a lot of hatred towards them because of their language, poverty, and skin color.

Your average Border Patrol cop is a racist white supremacist and probably takes joy in knowing they might be sentencing an "illegal" to die by taking away their medications. Good people with emotions and empathy who are capable of critical thinking cannot do that kind of job.

> Edit: to clarify I can't believe that diabetics were left to die without insulin and I haven't heard anything like that in the news.

It certainly wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility.

https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-the-cell-where-a-s...

> Video obtained by ProPublica shows the Border Patrol held a sick teen in a concrete cell without proper medical attention and did not discover his body until his cellmate alerted guards. The video doesn’t match the Border Patrol's account of his death.

> The video shows the only way CBP officials could have missed Carlos’ crisis is that they weren’t looking. His agony was apparent, even in grainy black and white, making clear the agent charged with monitoring him failed to perform adequate checks, if he even checked at all. The coroner who performed an autopsy on Carlos said she was told the agent occasionally looked into the cell through the window.

It is being an utter asshole with technicalities. Given a syringe of insulin a high enough dose to save someone too high in blood sugar can be used to kill someone stable or low.

Strip away all of the special pleading for authority and it is clear the bastards belong in jail for a long time.

Why throw away that girl's music CDs? They are harmless and probably brought her a lot of joy.
There's a saying: "the cruelty is the point".
What’s the hacker news angle on this article? I was happy to discuss it on other sites this morning, but it seems like a purely political article without any unique appeal to Hackers.
Because travel over boarders unmolested and ability to transport data are important both philosophically and practicality. Much of the appeal of the internet is the casual reach - these actions are the exact opposite.

In addition to concerns about human rights which are succinctly described as "everyone's problem" and not to be dismissed because of whose team would look bad.

The country and its people have a punitively cruel side to them. Many would make fantastic authoritarians.

(I’m from there.)