By Priscilla Alvarez | CNN
Washington (CNN) – A whistleblower who previously worked at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Georgia detailed a high rate of hysterectomies and alleged medical neglect in a complaint filed to the Department of Homeland Security inspector general Monday.
Dawn Wooten, a licensed practical nurse employed by the center who’s represented by the Government Accountability Project and Project South, stated in a complaint that while some women may have required a hysterectomy, “everybody’s uterus cannot be that bad.”
The Government Accountability Project provides representation for whistleblowers and Project South is a social justice organization. The complaint is also signed by several immigrant advocacy organizations: Georgia Detention Watch, Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights and South Georgia Immigrant Support Network.
Hysterectomies being performed on detained women without their consent sounds like a horror story out of a fascist regime, not something happening in the United States in 2020. Add that to the complaints about limited COVID-19 testing, lack of adequate medical care such as withholding lifesaving medicines from detainees, and overall neglect to those who complained of symptoms and pain. We understand that this is a whistleblower complaint which demands further investigation, but if even a shred of this is true it’s an absolute failure of leadership, accountability, and oversight of a government agency that owes a duty of care to those it decides to detain, the majority of which are not criminals and could easily be released into the custody of family members rather than subjected to long term detention where horrors like this may be taking place.
Darius Amiri, Rose Law Group Immigration Department Chair
