They carried me like a corpse - ICE straps refugees into full-body restraints and calls it security

When you think you have already seen everything in research - people, situations, every document, every image, every boundary of state cruelty - there usually comes the moment that silences even the most seasoned eye. What becomes visible here shatters the limits of what is conceivable. It surpasses not only human understanding but also every measure of respect owed to a human being.

In the night, when the officers opened the cell doors, metal and fear clinked in the same rhythm. Men whose only act was to believe in the protection of a nation stood in a line, barefoot on cold concrete, shackled at hands and feet. The Nigerian man, who now speaks from a camp in Ghana, recalls the sentence that fell like a verdict: "You are being sent to Ghana." None of them were from there. No one was allowed to make a call, no one to speak to a lawyer. Instead, a device was used that sounds as if it came from a dystopian screenplay: The WRAP - a full-body restraint, black and yellow, designed to turn human beings into human packages. They were strapped in, one after another, and loaded into the belly of a plane - for a sixteen-hour flight to West Africa. "It was a kidnapping," the man says. "Not a deportation."

The WRAP - mockingly called "the burrito" or "the bag" by ICE officers - is the product of a bureaucracy that confuses the concept of security with total control. Originally developed as an emergency measure to calm violent individuals, it has now become an integral part of American deportation routines. People who neither resisted nor posed any threat were restrained in it for hours. They could neither eat nor drink, some could not breathe. And while the government defends its use as "standard procedure," international law speaks a different language: Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights prohibits any treatment that is "cruel, inhuman or degrading."

The leaked photo from Chula Vista, California, shows a detainee completely strapped into the restraint system "The WRAP," the head covered under a dense fabric hood. Human rights lawyers classify such scenes as serious violations of international protection standards. The use of combined restraint and breathing barriers can, under Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), be considered inhuman or degrading treatment. Article 1 of the UN Convention Against Torture (CAT) also prohibits any act by which severe physical or mental suffering is intentionally inflicted on a person to punish or intimidate them. Since the image was leaked from internal law enforcement sources, it raises the question to what extent such methods - officially declared as "security measures" - are applied systematically and outside any legal control.

Nevertheless, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency continues to use the WRAP - despite internal warnings. A report by the civil rights division of the Department of Homeland Security in 2023 explicitly warned of the risks. It documented several deaths in U.S. prisons where people had suffocated in these full-body restraints. Yet ICE continued to order more. Over 90 percent of payments to the California-based manufacturer Safe Restraints, Inc. came from the two Trump administrations.

The company that sells humanity

Safe Restraints, Inc. was founded in 1996 by a group of former police officers and medical professionals in California. The company headquarters is located in Diablo - fittingly named - an affluent suburb in Contra Costa County. The company's slogan reads: "Dedicated to protecting and saving lives." In reality, as seen in ICE flights, prisons and hospitals, that statement could hardly be more cynical.

CEO and president is Charles E. H. Hammond - a figure who publicly defends the WRAP as "life-saving." Hammond speaks of safety, of efficiency, of responsibility. Yet his products are used in scenarios that have nothing to do with medical care. The WRAP, human rights lawyers say, is not a safety tool but an instrument of physical and psychological subjugation - an industrially manufactured symbol of state violence.

The inventors of the device, police sergeants Ron O'Dell and Craig Zamolo of Walnut Creek, presented the WRAP in the mid-1990s as an alternative to the so-called "hog-tying" method, a then-banned restraint technique in which hands and feet were tied together behind the back. In practice, however, the system became a perfection of the problem: it professionalized what had previously been considered abuse.

According to its own claims, Safe Restraints has sold more than 10,000 units to over 1,800 police departments, correctional institutions and medical facilities in the U.S. and Canada. The company promotes its products online with free training, "train-the-trainer" programs, and a one-year warranty that covers repairs up to seven years after purchase - provided the device has not been "burned, cut, or structurally damaged." It is the language of a company that reduces human beings to maintenance cycles. Even the cleaning process is meticulously described: gloves, bleach water, brush, disinfectant spray - and the note that, for particularly soiled units, "a local crime scene cleaner" can be contacted. In that casual instruction lies the moral abyss of an industry that treats violence as a hygiene problem.

From California to the world - and into the dark zones of law

While the manufacturer appears at law enforcement trade shows, ICE continues to sign contracts without accountability. Neither DHS nor ICE has provided the Associated Press with access to usage statistics. It remains unclear how many people have been transported in the WRAP - and how many ended up injured or dead.

Excerpts from an internal memorandum of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency dated September 29, 2025, show that the use of the full-body restraint "The WRAP" is now being officially reviewed from a legal standpoint. The document, addressed to ICE Director Patrick J. Lechleitner and Chief Counsel Kerry E. Doyle, comes from the legal office of the Department of Homeland Security and bears complaint number 002577-22-ICE. It is a recommendation letter examining the legality and risks of the device in deportation operations - a clear sign that even within the agency, doubts about this practice have grown.

For the attorneys representing the victims, the company is complicit in systematic dehumanization. "If you sell a product that deprives people of their freedom of movement, you bear responsibility for how it is used," says Texas attorney Fatma Marouf, who has filed suit against ICE on behalf of several families.

Human rights organizations refer to international conventions: Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights prohibits torture as well as "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." The United States has ratified the treaty. Yet every week, planes take off in which human beings are strapped into a device manufactured in California and delivered with a warranty seal.

The depravity of "protection"

Safe Restraints presents itself on its website as a company that "saves lives, reduces injuries and minimizes liability risks." In truth, it saves no one - it saves systems from responsibility. It provides the technical infrastructure for a political program that reserves protection only for those who do not need it.

When asked for comment, Homeland Security replied: "The use of restraints on deportation flights has long been a well-established, standard ICE protocol and an essential measure to ensure the safety and well-being of both the detainees and the officers and agents accompanying them."

That such a device has become one of the export goods of the United States is a moral bankruptcy. It proves that the industrial logic of incarceration has long since penetrated the state itself: the idea that dignity can be packaged, restrained, and shipped - with a tracking number. One of the deportees, a man from Cameroon, describes how ICE officers put him in the WRAP after he stumbled on the aircraft stairs. "They carried me like a corpse," he says. He now lives with nerve damage.

The authorities call it security. The manufacturer calls it innovation. And the victims call it by its proper name: depravity - patented, certified, and paid for with taxpayer money.