Home > The Border Line > Archives > 2008 > May > 14
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Tancredo fails to block foreign aid to Mexico
An amendment by Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., that would have blocked certain foreign aid to Mexico until various conditions were met, was voted down by the House Foreign Affairs Committee Wednesday.
Lawmakers are debating a package of foreign aid, known as the Merida Initiative, that would provide $500 million to fight drug cartels in Latin America.
Tancredo’s amendment would have required the president to certify that the U.S.-Mexico border was secure before aid could be provided to Mexico.
In addition, it would have required a determination that law enforcement agencies in Mexico were not involved or complicit in the trafficking of drugs, weapons or people. Congress would have to approve the president’s certifications.
“Mexico must be required to clean up its act before we send truckloads of our tax dollars south - or we run the risk of American aid being siphoned off by the very drug cartels we are trying to defeat,” Tancredo said, in a press release.
The measure failed by a vote of 23 to 10.
Permalink | Comments (9) | Post your comment
U.S. drugging immigrants before deportation
The U.S. government has injected hundreds of foreigners it has deported with dangerous psychotropic drugs against their will to keep them sedated during the trip back to their home country, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.
The paper cited medical records, internal documents and interviews with people who have been drugged.
The Post identified more than 250 cases in which the government has, without medical reason, given drugs meant to treat serious psychiatric disorders to people it has shipped out of the United States since 2003.
Read the story here.
The article is the latest in a series about the poor treatment of immigrants in government custody. Previous installments explored 83 deaths of foreigners being held by the United States and “shabby medical care” in other cases.
See the entire series here.
One of the authors, Dana Priest , won the Pulitzer Prize this year for a series on poor conditions and care of U.S. soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
