More migrant women: No to surgery
Review of medical records bolster growing allegations
HOUSTON — Sitting across fromher lawyer at an immigration detention center in rural Georgia, Mileidy Cardentey Fernandez unbuttoned her jail jumpsuit to show the scars on her abdomen. Therewere three small, circular marks.
The 39-year-old Cuban woman was told only that shewould undergo an operation to treat her ovarian cysts, but a month later, she's still not sure what procedure she got. After Cardentey repeatedly requested her medical records to find out, the Irwin County Detention Center gave her more than 100 pages detailing a diagnosis of cysts but nothing from the day of the surgery.
“The only thing they told me was: ‘You're going to go to sleep and when youwake up, we will have finished,' ” Cardentey said this month in a phone interview.
Cardentey kept her hospital bracelet with the date, Aug. 14, and part of the doctor's name, Dr. Mahendra Amin, a gynecologist linked to allegations of unwanted hysterectomies and other procedures done on detained immigrantwomen that jeopardize their ability to have children.
An Associated Press review of medical records for four women and interviews with lawyers revealed growing allegations that Amin performed surgeries and other procedures on detained immigrants that they never sought or didn't fully understand. Although some procedures could be justified based on problems documented in the records, thewomen's lack of consent or knowledge raises serious legal and ethical issues, lawyers and medical experts said.
Amin has performed
surgery or other gynecological treatment on at least eight women detained at Irwin County Detention Center since 2017, including one hysterectomy, said Andrew Free, an immigration and civil rights lawyer working with other attorneys to investigate medical treatment at the jail. Doctors are helping the lawyers examine new records and more women are coming forward to report their treatment by Amin, Free said.
The AP's review did not find evidence of mass hysterectomies as alleged in a widely shared complaint filed by a nurse at the detention center. Dawn Wooten alleged that many detained women were taken to an unnamed gynecologist whom she labeled the “uterus collector” because of how many hysterectomies he performed.
A lawyer who helped file Wooten's complaint said she never spoke to any women who had hysterectomies. Priyanka Bhatt, staff attorney at the advocacy group Project South, told The Washington Post that she included the hysterectomy allegations because she wanted to trigger an investigation to determine if theywere true.
“I have a responsibility to listen to the women I've spoken with,” Bhatt told the AP lastweek.
She said one woman alleged that she was repeatedly pressured to have a hysterectomy and that authorities said they would not pay for her to get a second opinion.
Amin told The Intercept, which first reported Wooten's complaint, that he has only performed one or two hysterectomies in the past three years.
His attorney, Scott Grubman, said in a statement: “We look forward to all of the facts coming out, and are confident that once they do, Dr. Amin will be cleared of anywrongdoing.”
Since 2018, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says it found records of two referrals for hysterectomies at the jail, which is in Ocilla, Georgia, about 150 miles fromAtlanta.
In a statement Friday, ICE Acting Director Tony Pham said: “If there is any truth to these allegations, it is my commitment to make the corrections necessary to ensure we continue to prioritize the health, welfare and safety of ICE detainees.”
LaSalle Corrections, which operates the jail, said it “strongly refutes these allegations and any implications of misconduct.”
Women housed at Irwin
County Detention Center who needed a gynecologist were typically taken to Amin, according to medical records provided to the AP by Free and lawyer Alexis Ruiz, who represents Cardentey.
TheAPreviewed records for awoman whowas given a hysterectomy. She reported irregular bleeding andwas taken to Amin for a D&C, a surgical procedure formally known as dilation and curettage that removes tissue from the uterus and can be used as a treatment for excessive bleeding.
A lab study of the tissue found signs of early cancer, called carcinoma. Amin's notes indicate the woman agreed 11 days later to the hysterectomy.
Free, who spoke to the woman, said she felt pressured by Amin and “didn't have the opportunity to say no” or speak to her family before the procedure.
Doctors told theAPthat a hysterectomy could have been appropriate due to the carcinoma, though there may have been less intrusive options.
Lawyers for bothwomen asked that their names be withheld for fear of retaliation by immigration authorities.
In another case, Pauline Binam, a 30-year-old woman who was brought to the U.S. from Cameroon when she was 2, saw Amin after experiencing an irregular menstrual cycle and was told to have aD&C, said her attorney, VanHuynh.
When she woke up from the surgery, Huynh said, she was toldAminhad removed one of her two fallopian tubes, which connect the uterus to the ovaries and are necessary to conceive a child. Binam's medical records indicate that the doctor discovered the tube was swollen.
Whilewomen can potentially still conceive with one intact tube and ovary, doctors who spoke to the AP said removal of the tubewas likely unnecessary and should never have happened without Binam's consent.
The doctors also questioned how Amin discovered the swollen tube because performing a D&C would not normally involve exploring a woman's fallopian tubes.
In 2013, state and federal investigators sued Amin, the hospital authority of Irwin County and a group of other doctors over allegations they falsely billed Medicare andMedicaid.
The lawsuit was settled in 2015 with no known sanctions against Amin. The hospital paid a $520,000 settlement, saying no doctor paid any of it and that the doctors had been “released from any and all liability.”
The Georgia Medical Board lists Amin as a doctor in good standing with no public disciplinary action.