Racist eugenics once again: forced sterilizations of immigrant women

 

Poster art for a 1971 “Stop forced sterilization” rally in San Francisco.
(Rachael Romero/San Francisco Poster Brigade via Library of Congress)

It is a perfect storm combing many issues that progressives care about: racism, eugenics, reproductive rights, immigrant rights, private detention facilities, retaliation against whistleblowers and medical abuse.

To keep this short, I will summarize the basic details. If you want to dig into the evidence or get more information, the story has been reported by The Washington Post, The Guardian, CNN, NPR and The New Yorker.

Here is the story in a nutshell. Immigrant women with minor gynecological problems at the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, a private facility run by LaSalle Corrections, were taken to the Irwin County Hospital. There, they were seen by doctor Mahendra Amin, a gynecologist based in Douglas, Georgia. The doctor told them that they had ovarian cysts or other problems that required surgery. The women were given consent forms in English to sign, even though they could not read or understand English. Apparently, medical records were falsified to state that the women did speak English. Then the women underwent surgery in which their uterus or Fallopian tubes were removed, ensuring that they could not have children.

According to an advocate, one woman volunteered for deportation when she became aware that she would “lose her reproductive system” if she continued to be treated at the facility.

The story came to light when it was reported by nurse Dawn Wooten, who works at the detention facility. Nurse Wooten also complained of numerous dangerous practices related to Covid-19, including placing staff and detainees at risk of contracting the virus, neglecting medical complaints and refusing to test symptomatic detainees. She did not identify the doctor performing the surgical procedures, other than by calling him the “uterus collector”. However, the story was corroborated by private interviews conducted by The Intercept with three detained women at the Irwin facility, eight detainee advocates and a former employee. These witnesses identified the doctor as Mahendra Amin. The story was also confirmed by the organization Immigrant Families Together by speaking directly to the victims.

Through his lawyer, doctor Amin has denied the accusations, claiming that he has only performed one or two hysterectomies in the last two or three years. In contrast, the human rights group Project South claims that at least 20 women received hysterectomies in 6 years. This might be just the tip of the iceberg since the majority of detained women do not have lawyers or advocates.  

The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) initially stated: “ICE takes all allegations seriously and defers to the Office of Inspector General regarding any potential investigation and/or results. That said, in general, anonymous, unproven allegations, made without any fact-checkable specifics, should be treated with the appropriate skepticism they deserve.” Later, an ICE official stated to the media: “According to ICE data, since 2018, only two individuals at Irwin County Detention Center were referred to certified, credentialed medical professionals at gynecological and obstetrical health care facilities for hysterectomies in compliance with National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NCCHC) standards. Based on their evaluations, these specialists recommended hysterectomies. These recommendations were reviewed by the facility clinical authority and approved.”

Predictably, the repression has started. The whistleblower, nurse Dawn Wooten, was demoted. There are fears that ICE will rush to deport key witnesses, as it did with a woman who reported sexual assault at El Paso detention center. Representative Jackson Lee (D-Texas) just stopped the deportation of Pauline Binam, a woman who had her Fallopian tube remove at the Irwin detention center and who could be a key witness in the investigation opened by the Democrats. Binam has been in the United States since she was two years old and is under threat of being deported to Cameroon.

There is a long history of forced sterilizations in the USA. Many were performed following the doctrine of eugenics, which aims to improve the quality of the human population. Historically, this was done mostly by suppressing the ability to reproduce of people and groups judged biologically inferior. In the United States, this included Black, Native Americans, Puerto Ricans and Mexicans. These eugenics policies are not in the distant past. According to an investigation done in 2013, from 2006 to 2010 at least 148 female inmates in two California prisons were sterilized by coercion. This raises the suspicion that there is a secret policy to sterilize immigrants so that they cannot have offspring in the United States in the case that they are granted asylum or legal residence.

So, the question now is whether the forced sterilizations at the Irwin detention center were just the work of one rogue doctor or expose a secret racist eugenic policy of ICE and the current administration.

Please, keep paying attention to this issue. Do not let it be buried in the avalanche of awful news that is drowning us these days.