A new whistleblower complaint has been filed against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency charging "jarring medical neglect" inside the Irwin County Detention Center, in Georgia. The facility is a private prison, run by LaSalle Corrections.
The whistleblower complaint charges facility management with refusing to test detained immigrants for COVID-19 infection, with hiding COVID-19 infections from detainees and from staff, and with other patterns of neglect, but the most shocking claim is of "high rates" of medical sterilizations of detained women. According to the complaint, ICDC nurses report "high rates of hysterectomies done to immigrant women," from "a particular gynecologist outside the facility."
From a nurse and whistleblower at the facility: "Everybody he sees has a hysterectomy—just about everybody. [...] We've questioned among ourselves like goodness he's taking everybody's stuff out. ... That's his specialty, he's the uterus collector. [...] Everybody he sees, he's taking all their uteruses out or he's taken their tubes out. What in the world."
The complaint charges that the immigrant women are not fully informed of the procedures before they are performed, with non-Spanish speaking staff "googling Spanish" to try to convey what will be done or giving conflicting justifications for it. One detainee was reportedly given three separate, conflicting explanations for what procedure was to be done, from draining a cyst to "scraping tissue" to falsely claiming the woman was suffering from "heavy bleeding"—though the women herself told them she was not.
The attorneys behind the complaint would not confirm the identity of
the doctor referenced in the complaint, but other news organizations have learned it is gynecologist
Mahendra Amin, based in Douglas, Georgia. The doctor, also an immigrant,
is affiliated with Coffee Regional Medical Center and Irwin County
Hospital in Georgia.
The reasons for the "high rates" of hysterectomies are not speculated on, but the sterilization of prisoners without their informed consent has a notorious history, both in this nation and in others. Whether the procedures are being done through faulty or "neglectful" diagnosis, or in an attempt to inflate medical billing, or for racial motives is not known.
According to the complaint, it appears as if detention center officials transfer women to an outside gynecologist, now believed to be Amin, and that detained women told Project South they do not trust the doctor. Dawn Wooten, a licensed practical nurse employed by ICDC, later emerged as the whistleblower. “I’ve had several inmates tell me that they’ve been to see the doctor and they’ve had hysterectomies and they don’t know why they went or why they’re going,” the nurse said in the complaint, noting that other ICDC nurses also expressed concern about the gynecologist, whom she referred to as “the uterus collector.”
A spokesperson for the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that has represented people detained at ICDC, confirmed to Prism that Amin has seen multiple women represented by the organization. The spokesperson could not currently confirm the extent of those appointments.
The Trump administration has become known for its inhumane treatment of migrant women, pregnant people, and other vulnerable populations in the detention system.
Federal agencies specifically targeted pregnant migrants as part of the “zero tolerance” policy, setting off a chain of events in which hospitals separate mothers from their newborns. Former Office of Refugee Resettlement Director Scott Lloyd forced teen migrants to remain in federal custody because they wanted to access abortion care. He took the battle all the way to the Supreme Court, fighting migrants’ constitutional right to abortion because abortion did not gel with his staunch religious beliefs. Lloyd even blocked teens from accessing care when their pregnancies were the result of rape. ICE also covertly changed its policy regarding pregnant people requiring they be detained instead of released, and Border Patrol has pushed doctors to “clear” pregnant migrants for detention.
The allegations of medical neglect and human rights abuses at ICDC are longstanding. However, conditions have worsened during the pandemic. Immigrants experience “jarring” and “life-threatening” medical neglect inside the Georgia detention center, according to the complaint, which also alleges the facility falsifies medical records, shreds immigrants’ requests for health care, denies detained people lifesaving HIV and cancer medications, and provides almost no protections against COVID-19. Women detained at the Irwin County Detention Center released a video in April pleading to be released and expressing fear they would die in the facility.
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