Alleged Forced Sterilizations in ICE Camp Follow a 4-Year Pattern of Abuse
Whistleblower and former ICE detention facility nurse Dawn Wooten, left, stands with protestors calling for detention camp closures in the wake of her revelations. Source.
A whistleblower report filed to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) last week alleges that a suspiciously high number of hysterectomies have been taking place at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) migrant detention center in Georgia. The whistleblower, Dawn Wooten, is a former nurse at the facility. ICE has denied these allegations, but this report is only the latest in a years-long string of complaints and controversies that have surrounded ICE since the start of the Trump administration.
By the end of his eight year term in office, President Obama’s administration had collectively deported more individuals than the sum total of prior deportees across the entire 20th century. Trump’s numbers are lower on a year by year comparison than the Obama administration. But overall, ICE arrests still reached a six year high in 2019. This is partially because under Trump’s direction in early 2017, Obama-era policy to prioritize the arrests of violent criminal offenders has been discarded. ICE focuses instead on arresting whomever they are able to track, using paper trails of minor infractions like parking tickets to hone in on undocumented immigrants, and leading to more net arrests.
When those immigrants are detained, they face long periods of imprisonment in overcrowded detention centers. Influxes of asylum seekers over the United States’ southern border coupled with the increase in nonviolent offender arrests have created an efficiency lag, and it now takes months for a detainee to be processed through the agency’s deportation protocols.
Removing focus on violent criminals isn’t the only policy change that ICE has enacted. Also in 2017, ICE reversed their policy on pregnant women. Their former policy was to release pregnant women in custody, but they pivoted to keeping these women in detention to comply with one of Trump’s first executive orders, which mandated ICE officials follow the law more stringently in regards to individual cases. In the time since this policy was enacted, at least two women suffered miscarriages within ICE facilities, allegedly due to their requests for medical help being ignored while in custody.
At the same time, ICE began to face wide criticism for its lack of care standards in detention facilities, particularly in regards to immigrant children. Detention centers that house children have been repeatedly found to be lacking in their capacity for medical treatment and the care of infants and toddlers, in addition to having widespread hygiene problems. The inefficiency of detainee processing times paired with substandard care for minors led to seven child deaths in the year following May 2018 after nearly a decade with none.
In July 2019, investigative journalism publication ProPublica released a detailed report which revealed the existence of an ICE Facebook group where employees had made a series of offensive and xenophobic jokes. These included derogatory remarks about the immigrants in their care, as well as offensive sexual content directed at latinx congresswomen.
Last week’s allegation from Dawn Wooten accuses a facility contracted gynecologist of being a “uterus collector,” stating, “Everybody he sees has a hysterectomy—just about everybody.” Wooten did not name the gynecologist in her report, but he has now been identified by Business Insider as local practitioner Mahendra Amin. The allegation continues on to accuse ICE of disregard for the dangers posed by COVID-19 to detainees within the facility.
In response, congressional Democrats are demanding an investigation into the medical practices at the Georgia detainment center. Representative Joaquin Castro (D-TX 20), who also serves as the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chairman, released a statement in which he referenced the United States’ history of utilizing hysterectomies and other sterilization procedures to commit long term eugenics practices in “undesirable” populations. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA 12), House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD 05), Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) have all requested that the Department of Homeland Security begin an immediate investigation into the detention center. These efforts were compounded last Tuesday with a letter signed by 168 members of Congress. A number of progressive congressional Democrats also redoubled calls on Twitter for ICE to be formally abolished.
The Department of Homeland Security Inspector General has not yet responded to the calls for an investigation.