Yves here. Readers may know that some of the history of US black sites, as in torture sites, overseas has become public. I understand from a former Thai government staffer here that the US ran a second site here, in the basement of the US embassy.
By Thomas Neuburger. Originally published at God’s Spies
This is a follow-up to our recent Minnesota Black Site post:
Is ICE Running a Black Site in Minnesota?
Is it really fair to call the ICE prison at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building a “black site”? Let’s take a look.
What Is a ‘Black Site’?
“Black site” is a scary term. It’s been frequently used for places where the CIA maintains off-the-radar prisons, where abducted terrorists are taken, held and usually tortured.
Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan was (and may still be) such a site. From the Atlantic in 2010:
The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) runs a classified interrogation facility for high-value detainees inside Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan, defense and administration officials said, and prisoners there are sometimes subject to tougher interrogation methods than those used elsewhere.
Both the New York Times and the BBC reported that prisoners who passed through the facility reported abuse, like beatings and sexual humiliation, to the Red Cross, which is not allowed access. The commander in charge of detention operations in Afghanistan, Vice Admiral Robert Harward, has insisted that all detainees under his purview have regular Red Cross access and are not mistreated.
There’s more at Wikipedia, which reports the 2014 claim by “defense officials” that the facility has been shut down. (True? Who knows? We pay our warriors to lie to keep us safe.)
The definition of “black site” goes something like this:
Black sites are clandestine state-operated detention centers where prisoners who have not been charged with a crime are incarcerated without due process or court order, are often mistreated and murdered, and have no recourse to bail.
What’s interesting about black sites is that they’re not really that secret — they’re just unacknowledged and inaccessible to inspection. The Bagram black site was known as a torture site to the New York Times as early as 2005:
In 2005, The New York Times obtained a 2,000-page United States Army investigatory report concerning the homicides of two unarmed civilian Afghan prisoners by U.S. military personnel in December 2002 at the Bagram Theater Internment Facility (also Bagram Collection Point or B.C.P., now the Parwan Detention Facility) in Bagram, Afghanistan, and general treatment of prisoners. Two prisoners, Habibullah and Dilawar, were repeatedly chained to the ceiling and beaten, resulting in their deaths. Military coroners ruled that both prisoners’ deaths were homicides. Autopsies revealed severe trauma to both prisoners’ legs, describing the trauma as comparable to being run over by a bus. Seven soldiers were charged in 2005.
By the way, there’s still a detention center, the “Parwan Detention Facility,” next to the base. Black site? Who knows?
The Bishop Whipple Detention Center
So the questions are these. Is the prison at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building…
- acknowledged?
- accessible to inspection?
- a place of torture?
…though the last is not strictly necessary for a black site to exist.
To answer, it seems the immigrant cells are acknowledged, but this is the first report I’ve seen that separate known-citizens cells exist, where illegally detained or abducted citizens could be held indefinitely and without charges.
Second, it’s certainly true that the Bishop Whipple prison is not subject to inspection.
Finally, as to being a place of torture, consider this, from the Houston Chronicle report of the incident (all emphasis mine):
On their way to the cells, [O’Keefe and Sigüenza] saw other detainees who were screaming and wailing for help, though most were dejectedly staring at the ground, they said. In one instance, they observed a woman who was trying to use a toilet while three male agents watched. The overwhelming majority of detainees were Hispanic men, though some were East African — Minnesota is home to the country’s largest Somali community.
“Just hearing the visceral pain of the people in this center was awful,” O’Keefe said. “And then you juxtapose that with the laughter we heard from the actual agents. … It was very surreal and kind of shocking.”
Sigüenza said one of his cellmates had a cut on his head and the other had an injured toe, but neither was offered medical help. Their requests for water or to go to the bathroom outside their cells were also ignored, he said.
Note the toilet incident. Humiliation, including sexual humiliation, is a form of torture. It makes people ashamed and compliant, and it’s done deliberately.
There are also reports like this:
Agents say man injured in ICE custody ‘purposely ran headfirst into a brick wall’
A Minnesota man incurred severe head wounds while in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody earlier this month, with the agency posting guards at his hospital bedside despite his deteriorating condition, according to his attorneys.
The man, who was born in Mexico, was detained by federal immigration agents Jan. 8 on St. Paul’s east side, according to a habeas corpus petition in federal court asking for his release.
The man was brought to the hospital by agents four hours after his arrest. A CT scan found that the man had “life-threatening bilateral skull fractures and hemorrhaging.” …
One agent told hospital staff, according to the petition, that “he got his shit rocked,” but did not share other information.
And consider this story of a man whose door was broken down to affect his arrest. He was taken to the Bishop Whipple Federal Building where this occurred:
ICE agents take ‘trophy pictures,’ pack detainees into holding cells
Gibson said that after they arrived at the Whipple Federal Building near MSP airport, where ICE has a detention facility, the agents paused and forced him to take part in an act of ritual humiliation.
“They took trophy pictures with their personal phones. Like one stood by me on the right side of me. One stood on the left side of me. And they went, like, thumbs up and took pictures with their personal phones,” he said, adding that agents took similar photos with other detainees. …
Inside the detention center, Gibson said that officers put him in a bare, metal holding cell about the size of a small conference room with around 40 other detainees. Their legs were shackled. He said that the cell was cold and they shared a single toilet that offered no privacy. Gibson says that one person in the cell appeared to have scabies.
Note also the open defiance of court orders in the same story:
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Bryan on Monday ordered ICE not to remove Gibson from Minnesota, away from his family and lawyer.
But later Monday, officers put Gibson on a plane along with other shackled detainees and flew them to a detention center in El Paso, Texas.
This is not your usual arrest-and-detention facility — not Whipple nor any place like it. And the State has three years left to build even more.
“This is not your usual arrest-and-detention facility — not Whipple nor any place like it. And the State has three years left to build even more.”
I have the nagging feeling that the State will continue operating such facilities whenever convenient even after the Trump/Republican government is out.
Remember when right wingers like Glenn Beck were screaming about FEMA concentration camps. There does seem to be some truth to the claim that Republicans are doing or are planning to do whatever they are accusing the Dems of doing.
“some truth to the claim”?….. of republicans confessions for every accusation….. I’m not clear here. What are republicans claiming democrats do that they are not doing?. Right off the bat, I can’t think of anything.
I think that special mention should be made of the Homan Square facility in Chicago only a decade ago. This was a black site for the Chicago police that family and lawyers could not get access to. I don’t think that anyone was punished for this blatant illegal site and certainly people like Mayor Rahm Emanuel skated free-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homan_Square_facility
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-police-detain-americans-black-site
Ian Welsh touched on some of this trampling of the Constitution in his latest posting:
https://www.ianwelsh.net/
Thanks for this.
Emphasis mine. A completely overhauled DoJ can use all the detention camps DHS has built, to house these corrupt participants awaiting trial and sentencing. I know: nahgahappen. But how else does the US restore itself after all that has been lost? Americans can not ignore the abyss into which their country is sliding. And yes, many Americans do recognize these abuses and are aghast, but how bad must things get, before the government finds its inner Joseph Welch and confronts itself, “Have you no sense of decency?” Until then, these abuses of power will only get worse, no? Everyone I know outside the US have no trouble seeing this for what it is. None.
I know: stay safe. But there is no safety.
In true Neoliberal Dispensation form, we must all supply our own “safety.”
Is it going to happen? I know the powers that be seem to be pretty damn used to always getting their way and getting away with every manor of crime, corruption and abuse’ but I always have to keep the spark alive that one day, it might be all these people making accusations, launching investigations, ordering lawlessness. Abusing the constitution. pissing on the bill of rights. attempting to create a force from the population at large, which will enable them to respond with “lethal” force…. ( what a truly dim-witted cruel bunch of inferior people).
I am one of the millions of people who would have all these republican fascists in the house, senate, and supreme court…. all brought up on charges of sedition and treason . all the democrats who are really just as bad, and the local cops and judges and lower courts… from the county, to the state, to the federal level of minions who wag their fingers at people every day and tout some “respect for the law”…. should have it shoved up their proverbial… corn holes.
It seems that the idiots in uniform who can’t seem to figure out why they have a reason to exist, ought to be scorned for their inaction.
But the 15,000 people who showed up in the brutal cold are just the beginning. It seems like the chump administration knows they are going to go down for these crimes. And they are only going to double down . again and again.
So, even if the people are muted because of the propaganda . Can it really hold? Are the dipsh%ts who trump has surrounded himself with, ever going to stop screwing things up?. They can’t really seem to do anything.
They attack everyone in the world…. attempting to be on top.. what happens… everyone else figures out…. they don’t even need us.
It is like a big guy walking into a bar… confident he is strong and could take pretty much anyone in there,,,, too bad the dipsh^^t didn’t realize he couldn’t take EVERYONE in the bar…. And there were no witnesses,,, and no one knows anything about the dead guy behind the dumpster with a hockey stick up his buffoon.
I honestly don’t think any of these people, Trump included, really think that far ahead. They don’t seem capable of considering the larger, long-term effect of anything they do.
In Trump’s first term, there were at least some thinkers, although they all retreated to safety early on. The fear often voiced was that Trump 2.0 would have his act together, strategically realistic plans laid out, competent people assembled.
But this didn’t happen. As you point out, Trump has instead surrounded himself with complete dipshits. Trump is driven solely by grievance and the narcissistic need to dominate everything, defects that seem to be worsening with apparent cognitive decline. And these people, the sycophants attending him, are utterly mediocre. Unlike Obama, they can’t even lie competently. Lightweights all, completely outmatched, cosplaying in fantasy rôles, lacking any realistic view of the world around them. Their incompetence is the only bright spot. I agree (or at least hope) they will all go down, because there must ultimately be some sort of American Nuremberg, otherwise the country cannot survive intact.
But the damage they are doing in the meantime, people dying, lives lost or ruined, families broken … this obscenity cannot last three more years, it is unsustainable. For that matter, nothing of the US’s current trajectory, including the conditions that gave rise to Trump [nod to Clinton, W, Obama, Biden, and other elite facilitators behind the scenes] is sustainable.
Excuse the overly long response. I am just beyond shocked, angry, frustrated, and mostly deeply saddened by what is happening and has happened to this country.
Secret memos written by inhouse ICE council and handed out in secret to ICE officers.
Is John Yoo doing pro bono work for ICE?
(Remember the torture memos written for W and Cheney to justify US military treatment of prisoners in places like Abu Ghraib?)
I was wondering how it was possible for Neuberger to write this piece without mentioning Abu Ghraib, as that was a known prison, not a Black site, where people were extrajudicially rendered, disappeared, and without due process, a closer example to what ICE is doing.
Guantanamo deserves a mention, too.
Black Site at the Greyhound Bus Station during Hurricane Katrina where they rounded up a bunch of Muslims.
See the book ZEITOUN
Blowback is your friend.
I think that is true in a lot of ways. Lets face it, wealthy dems are all about undocced labor and would be incrementally moving us towards open borders (right wing policy) and globalism uber alles using corporate welfare (QE to infinity and beyond). Lets not forget the dow was 6000 when obama started his grift. It’s 50,000 now, and who got that money? Talk about a savings glut, anywho…dems are incrementalists (see boiling frog methodology) which doesn’t get reactive pushback but in comes trump going all in as an excrementalist and voila! reactive general strike, basically the worst fear an overweaned fat cat can suffer, proving in some way that accelerationism (the real kind, not the co-opted tech version) works. Crash it faster, fix it sooner.
“Crash it faster, fix it sooner.”
Yes, but to be effective, we need some planning for the after-time. Where is our modern day Thomas Paine? [I can concede that there are plenty of “niche” theoreticians opining away, but who of any public stature is even trying to set a counter-narrative to the Neo-liberal Dispensation we presently labour under?]
Stay safe, go grey.
“who of any public stature is even trying to set a counter-narrative to the Neo-liberal Dispensation”
That, my dear ambrit, is the $64,000 question, as they used to say. Perhaps it should be the $640,000 question now.
Those of “public stature” are as able to see a New World from where they’re perched as I’m able to see Mar-a-Lago through the snowy view out my front window this morning. They’re too pampered, too self-important, too oozing with hubris even to imagine that the Old World that has treated them so well could be dissolving before their eyes. The vision for that New World must either come from people and places far removed from giant pickup trucks and tiny screens or it must wait until the Old World is done crashing.
Hope you and Phyl are doing well in the ice. Stay safe indeed.
Sadly ironic considering the admirable work of Bishop Henry Whipple.
One thing about this occupation that I only realized this morning:
There is no off ramp.
To the best of my knowledge, this occupation is unconditional; there are no conditions for Minnesota to surrender and comply even if the governor wanted to. They are occupying us and aren’t saying why, for how long, or what accomplishes the mission of this “surge” (Which is insulting to MN Army veterans of Iraq). Without stated conditions, it’s looking like there isn’t an end to this, that the occupation will continue until they have either killed, maimed, or disappeared all of us in the Gopher state, or at least all of us who aren’t Nazis. Or until they are defeated by force.
Someone show me I’m wrong.
The Algorithm™ ain’t playin’ these days, red …
The Death of Ken McElroy, The Town Bully (originally via a YT reel, but Apple podcast submitted for commentariat).
Yes. I suspect you have it correct.
“that the occupation will continue until they have either killed, maimed, or disappeared all of us in the Gopher state, or at least all of us who aren’t Nazis. Or until they are defeated by force.
Someone show me I’m wrong.”
The reduction and removal of the non-nazi population will then allow “free and fair” elections to take place.
Oligarchs opposed to the regime should take note: they will come for you too!
Heavy sigh ….
The sad fact is the Vets of all the Expeditionary and ME wars since Granada believing they were making the world safe for democracy and freedom/liberty were ideological indoctrinated. Those that came to the reality whilst in service or post were diminished/cast off/took their lives. Some might forget Fallujah or Abu Ghraib prison where might made right. Then now ponder what is going on with the events in Israel and adjacent nations. No need to be a geopolitical expert when those skills or methods them come home too roost as the way was paved and those that were good in applying it and in supply. Not that most of ICE agents are from out of state [no local social baggage] and as I linked a day or two ago incentivized by huge bonuses. It reminds me of how C-Corp decades ago in attempting to destroy any social cohesion in the work place post the FDR era. This is why HR was set up as a gate keeper between floor/mgt and C-suite. You really don’t want too know mate.
Then one can take decades of libertarian et al ideology via orthodox econ or other social media platforms and then ponder the whole anti government aspect until that sort is dominate in government. Something that was funded from day one by Corps/Elitists[better by wealth] in creating the perfect society that would always allow them to rule and never experience the fear[tm] of being diminished [waves at Rand, etc]. The idea that a ideological mob would preach/proselytize about freedoms and liberties when in truth is was just the opposite and anyone not on with the program was painted as a socialist/commie. Still a big time propaganda thingy on X IMO.
I hate too say or allude too it but, what happens when vast swaths of Americans are relegated to Palestinian status just because they ***peacefully*** disagree with the currant political/ideological agenda, even with a family history that goes back to the Mayflower maybe.
This blog tried to warn people about how ideology cut from whole cloth was not good for most peoples futures. On that note I see that lots of nations are not keen on Israeli tourists, especially young IDF sorts. Not that 10-ish yrs ago I met a mob of about 10 on holidays post training, in Noosa, Oz and knew right away. Had a nice chat with them and then their handler faced me next to my Audi Q7. WOW sucked back into an old reality I never wanted to experience again, both of us taking between the lines, until he was satisfied I was not a concern. I was on holiday with family in my nation/state and then have to contend with this level of ????
I fear for those without the experience/knowledge/tools to deal with this situation. It can come down to pure survival like the people as observers are copping …
Skippy:
It’s Red Dawn (via YT)… except the “Red” ain’t Putin. It’s the “Red” side of America’s rancid duopoly.
And don’t look for any help from “team blue”. They want all of this in place for when the use case is not “immigration”, but “anti-you-know-what”.
I have to add that I find myself shaking my head with a big WTF whenever I hear or read some pinhead reporter or commenter in the legacy media crying about what Authoritative/Dictator Governments around the World like Russia, China, N. Korea, Iran, et all are doing to their own populations, when these Dumb Bastards can’t get their own heads around what is going on here in the good old USA.
Lmmao @@@@ – “JD Vance
@JDVance
·
5h
This level of engineered chaos is unique to Minneapolis. It is the direct consequence of far left agitators, working with local authorities.
Rim shot – oops bad taste pun …
Maybe the civil war is on but its not hot yet …. save for the random ideological impure … will there be tests for that later – ????
Amends in advance but the idea that Minneapolis is or has ever been a cesspool of far left socialist/commie property/freedom/liberty stealing zealots bent on bringing America down is absurd. Yet Vance just threw that up against the wall and painted everyone in it with a bit target on their backs. Then as people die he can wash his hand for the greater good thingy ….