The US Coast Guard's "Floating Guantánamos"

In this chilling New York Times Magazine long-read, journalist Seth Freed Wessler shows how the United States government is expanding the power to arrest and detain (without reading the detainee their Miranda rights or giving them access to a lawyer) far beyond their international borders: As a part of the "War on Drugs" the US Coast Guard has been detaining people they believe to be small-time smugglers allegedly destined for the US while en-route in international waters.  Once detained, the alleged smugglers are chained to a US barge, sometimes for months at a time, before they are brought to the US to be booked and arrested.  While they are in international waters, they have no access to lawyers.  Nor are they even permitted to call their families, to tell them that they are still alive.

These "boat prisons" are part and parcel of the vast expansion of American extraterritorial activity.  The US has signed more than 40 bilateral agreements with other countries to gain access to boats in international waters.  The architect of this policy, General John Kelly (from 2012-2016 head of Southern Command; now the White House Chief of Staff) sees it as a means to combat drug smuggling and drug-related violence, which, he says, poses an "existential" threat to the United States.  To protect the United States, then, he believes that American law enforcement must reach beyond U.S. borders.

But what are the human rights and civil liberties implications of such a policy?  Journalist Wessler's moving article begins to answer this important and disturbing question.