Vote for Human Rights Here in the US

If you haven't already, be sure to read The Washington Post's four part series on the violations facing those undocumented immigrants being held in detention centers across the country.

Most of these people are working-class men and women or indigent laborers who did something illegal (but rarely something that poses a threat to national security). Others are asylum seekers (I doubt being drugged and denied medical care was the type of asylum they were seeking).

The basic conditions in some of the detainee facilities are so bad that they've led to a multitude of preventable deaths. From the WaPo:

Some 83 detainees have died in, or soon after, custody during the past five years. The deaths are the loudest alarms about a system teetering on collapse. Actions taken -- or not taken -- by medical staff members may have contributed to 30 of those deaths, according to confidential internal reviews and the opinions of medical experts who reviewed some death files for The Post.

According to an analysis by The Post, most of the people who died were young. Thirty-two of the detainees were younger than 40, and only six were 70 or older. The deaths took place at dozens of sites across the country. The most at one location was six at the San Pedro compound near Los Angeles.

But don't just get heated: do something about it. Register to vote and choose the legislators who have the power to protect human rights. And in the short term, write your Representative and tell them to support the Detainee Basic Medical Care Act, which guarantees adequate and timely medical care to detainees. Tell them you're young. Tell them you vote. Tell them this is unacceptable.