Detainee hysterectomy allegations spark uproar
Lawmakers push for ‘immediate investigation’
Members of Congress are pressing the administration with further inquiries after the Department of Homeland Security announced this week it is looking into a whistleblower complaint that claimed federal immigration detainees underwent unnecessary gynecological surgeries – including full hysterectomies – without their consent.
Immigration attorneys said they were interviewing detainees this week to determine how widespread the problem might be, with some clients describing experiences where parts of their Fallopian tubes and their ovaries had been removed while they were in custody.
More than 170 Democratic members of Congress dispatched a letter Tuesday to Homeland Security’s Inspector General, urging the office to open “an immediate investigation.”
The allegations stem from a 27-page complaint compiled by Project South, an Atlanta-based advocacy group, as well as Georgia Detention Watch, Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights and South Georgia Immigrant Support Network. The complaint lists Dawn
Wooten, a former nurse at the Irwin County Detention Center, as a whistleblower who details medical neglect such as refusal to test detainees for COVID-19 and the practice of subjecting female detainees to hysterectomies without them fully understanding what was happening. The detention center is run by private prison company LaSalle Corrections and overseen by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Officials at LaSalle Corrections, which runs the center, did not return several requests for comments.
The complaint doesn’t name the doctor who allegedly performed the procedures, but several attorneys representing the women have identified him as Dr. Mahendra Amin, of Douglas, Georgia.
A person answering the phone at Amin’s office Thursday declined to answer questions or locate Amin for comment. In an earlier interview with The Intercept, the doctor confirmed he has treated immigration detainees and said he had performed “one or two” hysterectomies on patients in recent years, but said all procedures on immigration detainees are approved by officials at the detention center.
According to ICE data, two individuals at the Irwin County facility have been referred to medical professionals for hysterectomies since 2018. But in a statement, Dr. Ada Rivera, medical director of the ICE Health Service Corps., said she “vehemently disputes the implication that detainees are used for experimental medical procedures” and vowed a full investigation.
“Detainees are afforded informed consent, and a medical procedure like a hysterectomy would never be performed against a detainee’s will,” the statement said.
The whistleblower complaint alleges that immigration detainees were routinely sent outside the detention center to a gynecologist who performed full hysterectomies, partial ones and other surgical procedures without their full understanding or consent. In one case, Wooten said a detained young woman was supposed to have her left ovary removed because of a cyst, but the doctor remover her right ovary instead. The doctor still had to remove the left ovary, Wooten said, leaving the detainee infertile.
“She still wanted children – so she has to go back home now and tell her husband that she can’t bear kids,” Wooten said in the complaint.
Attorneys representing detainees at the Irwin County Detention Center said they didn’t realize the extent of the problem until they started talking with each other about their clients after the whistleblower complaint was filed. National organizations have since asked attorneys around the country to review their cases and talk to their clients to see if the allegations out of Georgia have been seen elsewhere.
Sarah Owings, an Atlanta-based immigration attorney, is working with a team of lawyers to identify women who have received medical care from the doctor mentioned in the complaint. By Wednesday, the team had identified more than 15 cases of women who underwent questionable surgeries at the hands of the doctor, including the removal of parts of the Fallopian tube and removal of the ovaries.
“We are still in the process of comparing notes,” she said. “I wouldn’t say there is a systemic pattern, but based on people who have gotten in touch, it points to a lack of informed consent and full understanding by people of these medical treatments.”