ICE’s ‘uterus collector’ and Trump’s racism
“He’s the uterus collector,” a detained immigrant woman told Dawn Wooten, a nurse at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement jail operated by the private, for-profit prison company LaSalle Corrections. Wooten’s complaint, sent to the Homeland Security inspector general, describes horrifying conditions at the Irwin County Detention Center in rural Ocilla, Georgia, including inadequate COVID-19 protections for both prisoners and staff, filthy living conditions, inadequate medical care and disgusting, ant- and cockroachinfested food. Wooten says imprisoned immigrant women she cared for told her a gynecologist subjected them to hysterectomies and other sterilizing procedures without their knowledge or consent. The inhumane conditions at Irwin expose the cruelty embedded in the treatment of immigrants here in the U.S., exacerbated by these shocking allegations of the forced sterilizations, a sinister practice with a long history in the United States.
Press accounts named the gynecologist as Dr. Mahendra Amin, who has an office not far from the Irwin immigrant jail. Speaking on the Democracy Now! news hour, nurse Dawn Wooten explained: “I had a couple of women come to me ... that was the term, that he’s ‘the uterus collector.’ It’s jaw-dropping.” Mahendra Amin was the principal defendant in a federal Medicare and
Medicaid fraud case that was settled for $520,000 in 2015. He reportedly performed a procedure on Irwin prisoner Pauline Binam without her consent, leaving her sterilized. After speaking out, Binam was targeted for deportation and put on a plane for Cameroon, the country of her birth that she left for the U.S. at the age of 2. Public and congressional outcry pressured ICE to remove her from the plane, after which she received compassionate release.
Dawn Wooten also described LaSalle’s inadequate response to the COVID-19 pandemic: “We didn’t have proper PPE. It was like a cover-up. As time progressed ... more [COVID] cases systemically appeared.” She recalled instructions she received: “It was unbelievable — ‘We didn’t have it. Don’t you talk about it. Don’t you discuss it.” Her account parallels descriptions in a June 2020 complaint filed by staff at another private ICE jail run by LaSalle, Richwood Correctional Center in Monroe, Louisiana. Staff there accused LaSalle and ICE of “gross misconduct and failures to comply with CDC guidelines” in their COVID-19 response, “endangering immigrants, workers and the public.” At least two guards at Richwood have died of COVID-19. In the past 12 months, 20 people have died while imprisoned by ICE — the highest number in 15 years. At least seven of those deaths were due to the coronavirus.
The racist, xenophobic and anti-immigrant policies of President Donald Trump and his senior advisor Stephen Miller act as gasoline on the fire of abuse suffered by undocumented immigrant women. For the roughly 30,000 people imprisoned by ICE, concerted, unrelenting public pressure to force their release amidst this deadly pandemic is needed now more than ever.
For the roughly 30,000 people imprisoned by ICE, concerted, unrelenting public pressure to force their release amidst this deadly pandemic is needed now more than ever.
Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 1,400 stations. She is the coauthor, with Denis Moynihan and David Goodman, of the New York Times best-seller “Democracy Now!: 20 Years Covering the Movements Changing America.”