ICE's 'Burrito' Suits Raise Concerns, Not Questions About Inhumanity
When ICE deploys a device that effectively turns human beings into a 'burrito' for a 16-hour flight, denying them lawyers and shipping them to countries they're not from—as detailed by the AP—the institutional response is 'concerns.' These are the same 'concerns' that have allowed a robust, often privatized, detention and deportation machine to flourish for decades under multiple administrations.
This isn't an isolated incident or a 'bad apple' scenario; it's a feature, not a bug, of a system designed to extract and discard. The photo provided by 'Safe Restraints Inc.' (yes, that's a real company) showing their custom 'WRAP' equipment for ICE, complete with a branding logo, encapsulates the sanitized brutality. While 'concerns' are dutifully noted by a 2023 DHS civil rights report, the
revenue streams for companies like Safe Restraints Inc. and the operational parameters of ICE continue largely unimpeded. One wonders how many "concerns" ICE gets to ignore before actual action is taken against institutionalized cruelty.