The Guardian is reporting today about a horrifying secret detention center in Chicago. It's not part of the unending war on foreign terror; it's part of a domestic war on our own citizens.
The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.
The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicago’s west side known as Homan Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units.
Prisoners are transferred secretly and their names removed from the police's booking database, essentially rendering them invisible and inaccessible to family, friends and attorneys. Abuses have included beatings, prolonged shackling, and at least one death.
Like the CIA's foreign "black sites" and Guantanamo, authorities appear to use the facility for "enhanced interrogation" in order to acquire information about other suspects and criminal activity:
Several special units operate outside of it, including the anti-gang and anti-drug forces. If police “want money, guns, drugs”, or information on the flow of any of them onto Chicago’s streets, “they bring them there and use it as a place of interrogation off the books,” Hill said.
By itself, this is a terrifying and repugnant situation. Even more disturbing is the idea that this is only one such facility that we know of and that there may very well be similar operations going in other parts of the country. It's hard to believe the upending of assumed constitutional rights and protections since 9/11 has not contributed to this twisted sense of law and order.