Women's Surgeries Questioned At GA ICE Facility, Pelosi Weighs In

OCILLA, GA — Immigration groups, a state lawmaker and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi are calling for an investigation into detainee care and conditions at an immigration detention center in Georgia. A nurse who filed a whistleblower complaint after she worked at the site said doctors performed questionable hysterectomies, refused to test detainees for COVID-19 and shredded medical records.

The immigration reform group America's Voice called the whistleblower's accusations of forced hysterectomies inside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Georgia "horrifying" and reminiscent of procedures in Nazi concentration camps. The group demanded the claims be swiftly and thoroughly investigated.

The complaint made to the Homeland Security Department's internal watchdog relies on accounts of Dawn Wooten, who worked full-time as a licensed practical nurse at the Irwin County Detention Center until July, when she was demoted to work as needed, the Associated Press reported.

Wooten calls a gynecologist — who was not named in the complaint — who works outside the facility “the uterus collector.”

“Everybody he sees has a hysterectomy — just about everybody,” Wooten said. “He’s even taken out the wrong ovary on a young lady.”

The facility in Ocilla, about 200 miles south of Atlanta, houses men and women detainees for ICE, as well as inmates for the U.S. Marshals Service and Irwin County.

“If true, the appalling conditions described in the whistleblower complaint – including allegations of mass hysterectomies being performed on vulnerable immigrant women – are a staggering abuse of human rights," Speaker Pelosi said in a statement.

The alleged medical abuses recall the exploitation of Henrietta Lacks for cancer research, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, and the forced sterilizations of Black women that Fannie Lou Hamer and others underwent, Pelosi said. The DHS Inspector General sould immediately investigate the allegations, she added.

"Congress and the American people need to know why and under what conditions so many women, reportedly without their informed consent, were pushed to undergo this extremely invasive and life-altering procedure," Pelosi said.

The House speaker also faulted what she called ICE’s "egregious handling of the coronavirus pandemic" over its apparent refusal to test detainees including those who are symptomatic, along with the destruction of medical requests submitted by immigrants and the fabrication of medical records.

Project South, one of the human rights groups that filed the complaint, has called for the facility's shutdown since 2017, describing it in earlier complaints as rife with unsanitary conditions, inedible food and medical care withheld from detainees.

Conditions at the Irwin County site have worsened during the coronavirus pandemic, the complaint said. Authorities have refused to test detained immigrants for COVID-19 in a timely manner, failed to release the numbers of positive tests and mixed those who have been exposed to the coronavirus with detainees who have not, according to the complaint.

“There is no social distancing possible in a detention center,” Azadeh Shahshahani, a human rights attorney at Project South, told The Guardian. “We are calling for people to be freed immediately, and we have been calling for this facility to be shut down for a long time.”

(Read the full complaint filed by Project South here.)

"In America, in 2020, with our tax dollars, we have detailed and horrifying allegations of forced sterilizations and hysterectomies being performed on immigrant women in ICE detention," said Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, in a statement. "The phrase ‘like an experimental concentration camp’ should shake us to our core. If we are the civilized nation we claim to be, we must find the truth and uproot this horrific manifestation of the relentless dehumanization and demonization of immigrants and refugees by this president, Stephen Miller and their lackeys at DHS."

Sharry called for investigations into the Irwin County facility by Congress, the Department of Human Services, and the medical community.

Wooten told The Intercept she voiced concerns about the poor conditions in the facility and was eventually demoted.

“When I started talking about the unfairness and injustice,” pressuring staff to conduct more COVID-19 tests, “I was written up,” Wooten said.

Because she has asthma, Wooten was tested twice for COVID-19 by mid-June, and instructed by her hospital to stay home until the results of her tests were received and her symptoms — including muscle aches, headaches, and diarrhea — had gone away.

After her third test on June 27, Wooten's managers reported her for “no call no show for her regular scheduled workday.” Her supervisors wrote that she was required “to call out each day she is off work.” They also pressured her to return to work, which she did, on June 23 and June 25.

One day after a policy requiring workers to call in sick daily was in place, Wooten was demoted, reducing her from full-time status to “on-call,” which cut her hours, she said.

Wooten, who is Black, told The Intercept that white staff members who took time off for testing were given “COVID pay” and did not have to call in every day.

ICE said it does not comment on matters before the inspector general but that it takes all allegations seriously.

"That said, in general, anonymous, unproven allegations, made without any fact-checkable specifics, should be treated with the appropriate skepticism they deserve,” the agency said in a statement.

Bob Trammell, Democratic leader in the Georgia House of Representatives from Luthersville, said the apparent practice of widespread hysterectomies is "unconscionable." He called for suspension of the licenses of the providers named in the complaint pending a full investigation by the state’s composite medical board and board of nursing.

Trammell also requested investigations into other ICE detention centers in Georgia that have been accused of misconduct, including the Robert A. Deyton detention facility and Stewart detention center, The Guardian reported.

While the 27-page complaint filed by Project South quotes unidentified detainees extensively, it also includes detailed comments from Wooten. She said the number of detainees infected with COVID-19 was much higher than reported because there was no active testing and not all cases were reported, according to the complaint.

Wooten said the sick call nurse sometimes fabricated seeing detainees in person when they hadn't. She reported seeing the nurse shred a box of detainee complaints without looking at them, and said nurses ignored detainees reporting COVID-19 symptoms.

If detainees reported a fever, nurses would put them on an over-the-counter cold medication for seven days without testing them for COVID-19, she said.

Wooten said the facility declined to use two rapid-testing COVID-19 machines that ICE purchased for $14,000 each. No medical staff had been trained on them, and Wooten said she saw the machines used only once.

LaSalle Corrections, which owns and operates Irwin County Detention Center under contract, did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Monday from The Associated Press.

As of Sunday, 42 detainees at the facility had tested positive for the virus, according to ICE. Nationwide, 5,772 detainees were positive.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

This article originally appeared on the Across Georgia Patch