It seems to me that some non-zero number of prospective immigrants will need to be deported and some non-zero number of those will not go willingly.
I would prefer that we do these flights under direct federal control (operationally and security-wise), but that’s mostly because I want the government to be directly responsible (for good and bad) for the outcomes rather than introducing layers of indirection that make unraveling problems more difficult.
I don't want to rehash all the arguments from the previous thread, but it's clickbait, none of the migrants were tortured. The author is referring to another even where they chartered a flight for CIA captives.
> A complaint filed last year to the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties by a coalition of immigrant advocacy groups and the Texas A&M University School of Law details the harrowing experience of three migrants deported via Omni Air, alleging that ICE “is using The WRAP in a manner that constitutes torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment in violation of the Convention Against Torture.” The complaint is based largely on interviews with the deportees conducted by Towle. One man recounted that after being thrown to the ground and shot with rubber bullets, he was placed in a WRAP and loaded onto an Omni flight, where his body remained locked at a 40-degree angle for about nine hours. “It was so painful,” he said. “The position was very stressful on my body, my muscles were shot with pain the entire bus ride and flight back to Cameroon.”
> Two other men deported to Cameroon and interviewed by Towle recalled a similar experience on an Omni flight: “My lungs were compressed, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t sit up. I was immobilized,” said one. “My body was in so much stress. I shouted, ‘You’re killing me!’ I truly felt I was meeting my death in that moment. Six officers, three on each side, picked me up and carried me onto the plane. They plopped me down, like a load of wood, across a center row of seats.” A third man included in the complaint told Towle that he was placed in a WRAP and left on the tarmac as other prisoners were loaded onto a flight transferring them to their Omni-run deportation. “They attached a cord from a buckle at my chest to a buckle at my feet and they pulled my upper body down so my face was in my knees. I could not breathe well. I was completely immobilized.” He added, “The day I was put in The WRAP by ICE, I wanted to die. I have never felt such horrible pain. It was torture.”
That reads like Omni was indeed "implicated in alleged torture of immigrants" to me. How do you read it differently?
> "For the purposes of this Convention, the term “torture” means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions."
From "Definition of Torture Under 18 U.S.C. §§ 2340–2340A"
The last sentence is the most important part, but the whole thing is relevant. Torture implies:
- That a public official is consenting to the infliction of pain and suffering
- The act is done to obtain information or a confession
- The act is done outside of lawful sanction
Words with legal meaning such as torture are often thrown around to get an emotional response, but it detracts from the horror that is actual torture. Waterboarding a 16 years old Afghan kid on expectation that is working with the Talibans is torture. Using force in the context of deportation is not torture.
Oh well if we've defined torture in a way that excludes this then I guess all the ethical implications disappear. It's not legally torture the same way hieleras on the border are not; you can maximize discomfort and pain for human beings in bondage but it's not torture because it's "lawful sanction".
By this definition sterilizing people against their will isn't torture if you didn't do it to get info or at the behest of a politician. Maybe that's workable for our court system in the US that is responsible for the highest incarceration per capita in the world (more than the USSR at the height of gulag), but it's not workable for me.
The cruelty is absolutely the point. We think torturing migrants will deter them the same way we assume harsh prison sentences deter crime. It doesn't. We are inflicting suffering on sentient beings for no good reason. Conventionally known as torture.
"Torture" is one of many words that, when people discuss it, they are speaking subjectively by default. It's totally reasonable to do - there is nothing wrong with having an opinion that somebody did something that does not meet some legal definition of the word, unless you are saying it in court. There are certainly words that are closer to the objective legal side of things by default in conversation ("copyright infringement"), but in general, using a word non-legally does not necessitate using it dishonestly, as you are implying ("to get an emotional response"). The legal argument is perfectly reasonable one to talk about, but it would be unreasonable not to recognize that both arguments are perfectly valid and interesting, despite potentially having opposite conclusions.
Sorry, that was a long way of saying that legal != moral.
That's fair (it's unfortunate that this is a repost from yesterday as I think my wording was more nuanced before), but that's not what the article says, they specifically call out that they chartered flights for the CIA to move captive to an actual black site. This is the ambiguity that I called clickbait.
The immigrants being deported were allegedly mistreated during transport, that's true. That mistreatment can we likened to torture (I disagree with that part but for the sake of the argument) but the author bundles actual "legally defined" torture with what you call "moral" torture and that's were it becomes clickbait.
In a formal fashion:
- Group A was transported by C to be D
- Group B was transported by C to be E
- The headline claims A was E which is wrong unless D = E
My claim is that D (mistreatment of migrants likened to torture) isn't equivalent to E (actual black site torture).
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[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 38.6 ms ] threadI would prefer that we do these flights under direct federal control (operationally and security-wise), but that’s mostly because I want the government to be directly responsible (for good and bad) for the outcomes rather than introducing layers of indirection that make unraveling problems more difficult.
I don't want to rehash all the arguments from the previous thread, but it's clickbait, none of the migrants were tortured. The author is referring to another even where they chartered a flight for CIA captives.
> A complaint filed last year to the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties by a coalition of immigrant advocacy groups and the Texas A&M University School of Law details the harrowing experience of three migrants deported via Omni Air, alleging that ICE “is using The WRAP in a manner that constitutes torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment in violation of the Convention Against Torture.” The complaint is based largely on interviews with the deportees conducted by Towle. One man recounted that after being thrown to the ground and shot with rubber bullets, he was placed in a WRAP and loaded onto an Omni flight, where his body remained locked at a 40-degree angle for about nine hours. “It was so painful,” he said. “The position was very stressful on my body, my muscles were shot with pain the entire bus ride and flight back to Cameroon.”
> Two other men deported to Cameroon and interviewed by Towle recalled a similar experience on an Omni flight: “My lungs were compressed, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t sit up. I was immobilized,” said one. “My body was in so much stress. I shouted, ‘You’re killing me!’ I truly felt I was meeting my death in that moment. Six officers, three on each side, picked me up and carried me onto the plane. They plopped me down, like a load of wood, across a center row of seats.” A third man included in the complaint told Towle that he was placed in a WRAP and left on the tarmac as other prisoners were loaded onto a flight transferring them to their Omni-run deportation. “They attached a cord from a buckle at my chest to a buckle at my feet and they pulled my upper body down so my face was in my knees. I could not breathe well. I was completely immobilized.” He added, “The day I was put in The WRAP by ICE, I wanted to die. I have never felt such horrible pain. It was torture.”
That reads like Omni was indeed "implicated in alleged torture of immigrants" to me. How do you read it differently?
From "Definition of Torture Under 18 U.S.C. §§ 2340–2340A"
The last sentence is the most important part, but the whole thing is relevant. Torture implies:
Words with legal meaning such as torture are often thrown around to get an emotional response, but it detracts from the horror that is actual torture. Waterboarding a 16 years old Afghan kid on expectation that is working with the Talibans is torture. Using force in the context of deportation is not torture.By this definition sterilizing people against their will isn't torture if you didn't do it to get info or at the behest of a politician. Maybe that's workable for our court system in the US that is responsible for the highest incarceration per capita in the world (more than the USSR at the height of gulag), but it's not workable for me.
The cruelty is absolutely the point. We think torturing migrants will deter them the same way we assume harsh prison sentences deter crime. It doesn't. We are inflicting suffering on sentient beings for no good reason. Conventionally known as torture.
Sorry, that was a long way of saying that legal != moral.
The immigrants being deported were allegedly mistreated during transport, that's true. That mistreatment can we likened to torture (I disagree with that part but for the sake of the argument) but the author bundles actual "legally defined" torture with what you call "moral" torture and that's were it becomes clickbait.
In a formal fashion:
My claim is that D (mistreatment of migrants likened to torture) isn't equivalent to E (actual black site torture).