Lives denied

It is news that is unbelievable. At the Irwin Detention Center in Ocilla, a small village in the Georgia hills, several inmates were reportedly sterilized against their will. This was reported by Dawn Wooten, a nurse for three years in the facility. In a letter, dated 8 September and presented the following Monday, the health worker revealed to the Department of Homeland Security the "serious medical irregularities perpetrated in the facility", which she allegedly witnessed. Starting with the “anomalous” recourse to hysterectomy. «He prescribed them to everyone. Those girls didn't even understand what he was saying, ”he said. The person responsible would be the same gynecologist, Mahendra Amin, currently under investigation. But the story would be part of a system made up of negligence, neglect and real abandonment.

 The modus operandi would have reached its peak with the outbreak of the pandemic which hit at least 31 illegal immigrants. Wooten, however, states that the cases are infinitely more, 50 in July alone, for a total of hundreds. The underestimation - he adds - would derive from the small number of tests and the obstinacy of the center's top management to ignore the infections, exposing the other inmates and medical staff to risk. Among these is Wooten herself. His repeated grievances would have led to the downsizing of the nurse, up to the dismissal, which took place in August. The civil organizations Government Accountability project, Project south, Georgia detention watch, Alianza latina de Georgia por los derechos humanos and Red de apoyo a lor inmigrantes del sur de Georgia took sides with him and signed the complaint. The affair risks overwhelming the US immigration and border control system (ICE). Also because Wooten's testimony was joined by the voices of various immigrants, about twenty in all, such as the Cuban Mileidy Cardentey Fernández or the Cameroonian Pauline Binam, subjected - they argue - to sterilization operations without their consent.

 Others asked to remain anonymous for fear of jeopardizing their request for regularization, especially after Binam was the subject of an expulsion order, which has been frozen for now. A former detainee told Project South that five female prisoners would be sterilized between October and December 2019. Ice, for its part, expressed skepticism over this series of "anonymous, unsubstantiated accusations, made without any detail for verify the events that occurred ". According to the head of the agency's health section, Ada Rivera, since 2018, only two of Irwin's women have been prescribed and approved a hysterectomy.

The authorities, however, have undertaken to investigate the matter to clarify. A sharp denial came from LaSalle corrections, the private company that manages the Irwin center, along with 17 others in the South of the United States, for a total of 13 thousand inmates. The latter reaffirmed full respect for health procedures and the dignity of migrants in its management of the structures. The defense did not convince the Democratic representatives in Congress, primarily the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, who are clamoring for an accurate investigation and continuous updates. On September 26, a delegation of 12 dem parliamentarians went to the center for an inspection.

California representative Nanette Diaz Barragán said she spoke to eight inmates. A young woman from El Salvador allegedly told her that she was subjected to a slew of injections by Dr. Amin and then, after some of his grievances, that she was sent to psychiatry. "This girl doesn't know what they did to her," said the deputy. Many women gave the delegates notices of denunciation: “You don't know everything we have suffered in here. Someone has to take charge of all this".

Meanwhile, the ICE has announced that the accused doctor - Mahendra Amin - will no longer treat Irwin's inmates. The affair has struck Americans very much, awakening the nightmare of forced sterilization carried out on African Americans in the 1960s and 1970s, when sixty thousand members of minorities and people with psychophysical problems were deprived of the possibility of reproducing. But it has also had an impact in neighboring countries. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador mentioned the case in his morning press conferences. Since September 14, its executive has launched an investigation. And the first results are not very reassuring. At least one of Irwin's Mexican inmates would have been operated on without her consent. In this case, it would not have been a hysterectomy - but the Mexican authorities did not specify whether there was anyway sterilization - but another type of gynecological intervention. Equally, however, the woman would have been subjected to it without being informed.
 

Info
The privately run detention center in Ocilla - a small town in Georgia, USA, already the center of investigations for medical malpractice against Coronavirus patients, has come under the crosshairs of the media for a shocking accusation.
Several Spanish-speaking immigrant detainees claim to have undergone hysterectomy treatment without their consent. The alleged perpetrator of this serious abuse is a private contract doctor who practices in the prison. More than 170 members of Congress have requested a thorough investigation. About 70% of the prisons for immigrants in this country are run by private companies which in turn entrust various services, including health services, to individuals.
 

Sunto
To the allegations of ill-treatment suffered by the inmates of the Ocilla prison in Georgia are added those relating to cases of hysterectomies performed by the doctor of the private detention center without the consent of the patients.


Lucia Capuzzo
NP october 2020