Stop ICE from Deporting Pauline, Victim of Involuntarily Sterilization
Washington Post: Pelosi demands probe after ICE nurse raises alarm over medical care, hysterectomies at detention center – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats demanded an investigation on Tuesday into claims by a nurse at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Georgia that detainees there have been denied basic medical care and possibly subjected to hysterectomies without their informed consent. (read more)
Mijente tweeted: “#FreePauline is a Black mother who’s lived here since age 2. Last fall, she went to ICDC’s gynecologist thinking she would have a routine surgical procedure. She woke up involuntarily sterilized. Instead of investigating, @ICEgov plans to deport her tomorrow. Act now!
Send a letter to ICE now in support of the emergency request to stop Pauline’s deportation here: http://bit.ly/freepauline.
#FreePauline also has a fundraiser to pay for her legal fees and give her a cushion if she needs to support herself once released or if she is deported by ICE. Donate if you can here http://bit.ly/supportpauline.
From: Eva Paterson
Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2020 5:08 PM
My friends Bill Hing and Maria Blanco confirmed this horror to me this morning.
It is important to note that a Black woman stood up and told the truth. As Maria wrote “Black people and immigrants of color are not human in the eyes of those responsible for these atrocities.” After I told Maria that I was deeply proud that a Black woman stood up, Maria wrote, “It’s true solidarity that comes from shared historical experiences.” That made me think of the Tuskegee “experiments.” Fannie Lou Hamer was involuntarily sterilized.
We are now officially living in the analogue of Nazi Germany. Remember that the Nazis studied how Black Americans were treated and modeled much of their efforts on our example. This is not a drill.
~ Eva
‘Like an Experimental Concentration Camp’: Whistleblower Complaint Alleges Mass Hysterectomies at ICE Detention Center
lawandcrime.com – 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 it’s 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 they’re 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 hysterectomy—just about everybody,” Wooten said, adding that, “everybody’s uterus cannot be that bad.”
“We’ve questioned among ourselves like goodness he’s taking everybody’s stuff out…That’s his specialty, he’s the uterus collector. I know that’s ugly…is he collecting these things or something…Everybody he sees, he’s taking all their uteruses out or he’s taken their tubes out. What in the world.”
Wooten – who is being represented in the matter by the Government Accountability Project – also confirmed that many of the detained women told her that they didn’t understand why they were being forced to have the procedure. She explained that some of the nurses who didn’t speak Spanish obtained consent from detainees “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.
