Several legal advocacy groups on Monday filed a whistleblower complaint on behalf of a nurse at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center documenting jarring medical neglect within the facility, including a refusal to test detainees for the novel coronavirus and an exorbitant rate of hysterectomies being performed on immigrant women.
The nurse, Dawn Wooten, was employed at the Irwin County Detention Center (ICDC) in Georgia, which is operated by LaSalle Corrections, a private prison company. The complaint was filed with the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) by advocacy groups Project South, Georgia Detention Watch, Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, and South Georgia Immigrant Support Network.
Multiple women came forward to tell Project South about what they perceived to be the inordinate rate at which women in ICDC were subjected to hysterectomies a surgical operation in which all or part of the uterus is removed. Additionally, many of the immigrant women who underwent the procedure were reportedly confused when asked to explain why they had the surgery, with one detainee likening their treatment to prisoners in concentration camps.
Recently, a detained immigrant told Project South that she talked to five different women detained at ICDC between October and December 2019 who had a hysterectomy done, the complaint stated. When she talked to them about the surgery, the women reacted confused when explaining why they had one done. The woman told Project South that it was as though the women were trying to tell themselves its going to be OK.
When I met all these women who had had surgeries, I thought this was like an experimental concentration camp. It was like theyre experimenting with our bodies, the detainee said.
According to Wooten, ICDC consistently used a particular gynecologist outside the facility who almost always opted to remove all or part of the uterus of his female detainee patients.
Everybody he sees has a hysterectomyjust about everybody, Wooten said, adding that, everybodys uterus cannot be that bad.
Weve questioned among ourselves like goodness hes taking everybodys stuff outThats his specialty, hes the uterus collector. I know thats uglyis he collecting these things or somethingEverybody he sees, hes taking all their uteruses out or hes taken their tubes out. What in the world.
Wooten also confirmed that many of the detained women have told her that they didnt understand why they were being forced to have the procedure, explaining that some of the nurses obtained their consent by simply googling Spanish.
The complaint details several accounts from detainees, including one woman who was not properly anesthetized during the procedure and heard the aforementioned doctor tell the nurse he had mistakenly removed the wrong ovary, resulting in her losing all reproductive ability. Another said she was scheduled for the procedure but when she questioned why it was necessary, she was given at least three completely different answers.
She was originally told by the doctor that she had an ovarian cyst and was going to have a small twenty-minute procedure done drilling three small holes in her stomach to drain the cyst, according to the complaint. The officer who was transporting her to the hospital told her that she was receiving a hysterectomy to have her womb removed. When the hospital refused to operate on her because her COVID-19 test came back positive for antibodies, she was transferred back to ICDC where the ICDC nurse said that the procedure she was going to have done entailed dilating her vagina and scraping tissue off.
Another nurse then told her the procedure was to mitigate her heavy menstrual bleeding, which the woman had never experienced. When she explained that, the nurse responded by getting angry and agitated and began yelling at her.