It was a nurse at the Georgia Private Detention Center, 300 kilometers south of Atlanta, who sounded the alert.
Dawn Wooten, 42, who has been in prison for more than ten years, lodged a complaint Monday, September 14 to denounce deplorable sanitary conditions with regard to the detained immigrants.
According to her testimony gathered by the NGO Project South, several women detainees complaining of heavy menstrual cycles were sent to a gynecologist who subjected them to hysterectomies - a surgical act that involves removing all or part of the uterus. .
"Almost everyone who goes to see him has a hysterectomy," worries the whistleblower.
Her testimony, which she also gave to the news site The Intercept, coincides with that of other staff members who have preferred to remain anonymous.
"An experimental concentration camp"
Four migrant women detainees at the center also voiced concerns in the Project South report about the large number of immigrant detainees who have had hysterectomies.
One of them met five who had surgery between October and December 2019. "When I met all these women who had this surgery, I thought to myself that it looked like an experimental concentration camp It was as if they were doing experiments on our bodies, "she reacted.
The identity of the gynecologist who consults outside the detention center is not specified in the report.
Dawn Wooten calls him the "womb collector".
If problems related to the ovaries can justify a hysterectomy, Dawn Wooten notes that the act becomes almost systematic for immigrant prisoners who go to this gynecologist.
And underlines the fact that these women, for the most part Spanish-speaking, seem poorly or little informed about the operation they have undergone.
Forced sterilization programs have already been revealed in the United States.
In July 2013 in particular, the Center for Investigative Reporting accused the prison administration of the State of California of having used this practice on at least 148 women prisoners between 2006 and 2010.
The whistleblower also reports gross medical errors, such as a right ovary removed instead of the left.
"The inmate, who was not completely anesthetized when she left the operation, heard the doctor tell the nurse that he had not removed the voucher. She had to go back to have the other removed. ovary due to a cyst. "
"She was upset," she continues.
"She still wanted children but had to tell her husband that she couldn't carry any more."
These accusations confirm what immigrant detainees have been reporting for several years: a blatant disregard for health and safety standards, a lack of medical care and unsanitary living conditions, the Project South report said.
No Covid-19 tests, nor a quarantine zone
On this point, the sanitary conditions have "only worsened" in the face of the threat of Covid-19, assures Dawn Wooten.
She describes "a silent pandemic" which is raging behind bars in the center: no tests for immigrants showing symptoms of the virus, no respect for quarantine areas ... Several Latin American prisoners denounced these sanitary conditions in a video in April last, in which they ask for help.
The working conditions are hardly more glorious for the employees of the center.
In her interview with The Intercept, the nurse ensures that the health staff had to continue working even if he showed symptoms of Covid-19.
Failures which, according to her, cost the life of her administrative manager, Marion Cole, who died of the virus last May.
Since her multiple cries of alarm, Dawn Wooten claims to have been demoted in July.
His full-time position turned into "on-demand" shifts without
"
proper explanation or justification
"
.
The whistleblower now lives under protection.
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