Democrats Will Investigate Whistleblower’s Claims of Forced Hysterectomies in ICE Custody

Sarah Jacoby
·4 min read

Democrats in Congress are now investigating claims that medical practitioners have been giving women hysterectomies in a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center without consent while also exposing detained people to unsafe conditions—even amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The claims come from whistleblower Dawn Wooten, a licensed practical nurse who worked at the Irwin County Detention Center (ICDC) in Georgia for three years, the Intercept reports. Her allegations are contained in a thorough complaint submitted by the advocacy groups Project South and the Government Accountability Project to the Office of the Inspector General on Wooten’s behalf.

Wooten “expressed concern regarding the high numbers of detained immigrant women at ICDC receiving hysterectomies,” the complaint reads. “While some women have heavy menstruation or other severe issues that would require hysterectomy, ‘everybody’s uterus cannot be that bad.’”

But it’s not just the sheer number of hysterectomies taking place that’s worrying, it’s also that many of the surgeries allegedly happened without proper informed consent, Wooten claims. “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,” she says in the letter. The complaint contains several stories of detained women who had hysterectomies without fully understanding what the procedure was. In some cases, Wooten claims, nurses would look up Spanish translations on Google or ask other detained people to explain the procedure rather than using the language line set up for that purpose.  

The complaint also reports serious issues of medical malpractice. For instance, according to one case in the complaint, a detained woman had a cyst on an ovary that required removal, but the doctor removed the wrong ovary. The woman ended up having both ovaries removed, the complaint claims.

In addition to the issues with surgeries, Wooten raises flags about a number of other issues that suggest severe medical neglect and mistreatment at the detention center, including the way the facility and its employees have handled the COVID-19 pandemic. In the complaint, Wooten alleges that the facility has been underreporting COVID-19 cases, refusing to test detained people with known exposure to the virus (including those who have symptoms), allowing employees who have tested positive for the coronavirus to keep working, and generally ignoring the public health guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

For its part, ICE “vehemently” disputes the claims, Ada Rivera, M.D., medical director of the ICE Health Service Corps (IHSC), said in a statement to the AP. It should also be noted that Irwin County Detention Center is one of many facilities in the country that ICE contracts to hold detained people. This one is run by a private company, LaSalle Corrections, which runs 18 detention centers in the South, the Intercept reports.

But on Tuesday a group of more than 160 Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to the inspector general demanding an investigation, the AP reports. “The reports of mass hysterectomies cause grave concern for the violation of the bodily autonomy and reproductive rights of detained people,” the letter reads. “Everyone, regardless of their immigration status, their language, or their incarceration deserves to control their own reproductive choices, and make informed choices about their bodies. We request an immediate investigation into these reports.” 

The letter also says these reports “hearken back to a dark time in U.S. history” in which 32 states passed eugenic-sterilization laws, which led to the sterilization of up to 70,000 people in the early 1900s. “This shameful history of sterilization in the United States, in particular sterilization of people of color and incarcerated people, must never be repeated,” the letter reads. “Yet, the similarities to the accounts of immigrant women and nurses in the Irwin County Detention Center today are eerily similar.”

The House Homeland Security Committee is already working on an ongoing investigation into conditions at ICE contractor facilities like Irwin County Detention Center. Now Representative Bennie Thompson, chairman of that committee, says they will investigate these new claims as well. “The allegations put forth in this whistleblower complaint point to an alarming pattern of unsafe conditions and a lack of oversight at privately run ICE facilities,” he said in a statement, calling the claims about hysterectomies “incredibly disturbing.”

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Originally Appeared on SELF