Immigrant women receive dubious hysterectomies and staffers openly neglect even basic COVID precautions at Georgia’s Irwin County Detention Center, says LPN Dawn Wooten in a complaint filed by four non-governmental organizations.
According to Wooten, the private immigrant detention facility has refused to test symptomatic inmates, has not been isolating those suspected of having the virus, and is disregarding mandatory CDC social distancing practices. Wooten’s complaint also notes that she and other nurses have been alarmed by the inordinate number of hysterectomy operations performed at the Center. In reference to the frequent and questionable hysterectomies one detainee described the detention center as “an experimental concentration camp.”
COVID-19 safety and treatment are given short shrift at the center, and Wooten says that even before the pandemic the facility was often dilatory in providing medical care for detained immigrants. Since the pandemic, the complaint alleges, the center has made almost no use of its two rapid-response COVID testing machines, and has instead sent swabs to be tested at a local hospital. Wooten was told she should not be “wasting tests” on people she suspected of being infected, and when she inquired about testing one detainee, a co-worker responded, “He ain’t got no damn corona, Wooten.”
In addition to failing to provide PPE for staff working directly with confirmed cases of COVID-19, Wooten’s complaint states that the facility forced symptomatic staff to continue to work in the facility and threatened them with discipline if they refused to work in dangerous conditions. Because she spoke out against such practices, Wooten says that she was transferred from her full-time position to a part-time job in which her shifts consisted of a few hours a month.
On Tuesday, September 15, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for an investigation. Regarding the alleged misuse of hysterectomies on immigrant women detainees, Pelosi said “The DHS Inspector General must immediately investigate the allegations detailed in this complaint. 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.” She also called attention to the neglect of COVID safety measures and proper treatment, and referred to “ICE’s egregious handling of the coronavirus pandemic, in light of reports of their refusal to test detainees including those who are symptomatic, the destruction of medical requests submitted by immigrants and the fabrication of medical records.”
Project South, one of the organizations filing the complaint, states that “ICDC (Irwin County Detention Center) has a long track record of human rights violations.”
For more details on this story and quotes from Dawn Wooten, see the article in The Intecept.
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