If you've followed the War on Terror at  all, you're almost certainly familiar with the U.S. detention facility  at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — a U.S. prison that exists outside the realm of  the U.S. justice system.
Now, it  turns out, there's a secret U.S. detention system in the War on Drugs,  too — and this one is aboard U.S. Coast Guard cutters sailing in the  Pacific Ocean.
In an effort to staunch the flow of  cocaine and other hard drugs from South America to Central America and  points north, Coast Guard cutters have been deployed farther and farther  from the shore in the Pacific Ocean. When these cutters capture a boat  carrying drugs, the smugglers are brought onto the ships and kept  shackled to the deck, sometimes outside in the elements, until the Coast  Guard makes arrangements for them to be transported back to the U.S.  for trial.
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