America's Disappeared

Secret Imprisonment Detainees and the "War on Terror"

Browse Return to Previous Page       Related Subjects All Subjects Political Science/Sociology

by Rachel Meeropol, Michael Ratner, Barbara Olshansky and Steven MacPherson Watt

Seven Stories Press

Due/Published February 2005, 120 pages, paper

ISBN 1583226451

September 11, 2001, sparked a firestorm of racial profiling, detentions and deportations by the United States government so grievous as to evoke the shameful internment of Japanese Americans of more than half a century past. Thousands have been imprisoned without either trial or any kind of judicial hearing: detained, often indefinitely, solely on the say-so of the executive. Yet knowledge of the particular circumstances and incidents of the detentions remains dim.

America's Disappeared: Secret Imprisonment Detainees and the "War on Terror" brings together, for the first time, detainees' own testimonies with a comprehensive framework for understanding the issues by leading constitutional scholars working for their release. Going beyond the prevailing accounts to a detailed exploration of detention-the forms currently in use, and the conditions of each-the authors authoritatively refute its alleged justifications, boldly exploring its human costs.

Beginning with a catalogue of dragnet schemes--voluntary interviews, NSEERs, the targeting of foreign students-America's Disappeared proceeds to document the blunt reality of this program of detention, presenting detainees' chilling accounts of solitary confinement, isolation, and physical and mental abuse. Turning to a history of American detention policy, the book surveys U.S. opposition to these illegal practices undertaken outside our borders and warns of the dangerous precedent set by this homegrown example.