Sherrill Calls For Investigation Of 'Chilling' ICE Complaints

NEW JERSEY - U.S. Representative Mikie Sherrill has joined colleagues calling for a federal investigation after a Georgia nurse filed a complaint alleging women received "questionable" hysterectomies and had a lack of medical care at the Irwin County Detention Center.

"This report is chilling. I strongly support the pending Homeland Security Committee investigation and encourage other committees with jurisdiction to follow suit," Sherrill said. "I also joined 173 Members requesting that the DHS Inspector General immediately launch an investigation."

In the letter sent to the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general the legislators said the complaint filed raised questions as to "whether there was proper, informed consent by many of the women who had hysterectomies."

The letter noted Dawn Wooten's claims that several of the women who had hysterectomies did not know why they even went to the doctor.

"Further, she reports that the language line was not consistently used by medical staff and some nurses attempted to communicate with the Spanish-speaking detained women using Google or asking other detained immigrants to interpret," the letter said. "One immigrant woman explained her experience receiving three different explanations as to why she was going to have a hysterectomy, and said that she 'felt like they were trying to mess with my body.'"

The letter said these reports hearken back to a dark time in U.S. history in which 32 states passed eugenic-sterilization laws, resulting in the sterilization of between 60 and 70 thousand people in the early 1900s.

"This practice continued for incarcerated individuals into recent times, as nearly 150 incarcerated women in California prisons were sterilized between 2006 and 2010," the letter said. "In Georgia alone, 3,284 individuals had been sterilized by the end of 1963, as the state was responsible for the fifth highest number of sterilizations in the country. This shameful history of sterilization in the United States, in particular sterilization of people of color and incarcerated people, must never be repeated."

The letter called attention to the similarities to the accounts of immigrant women and nurses in the Irwin County Detention Center and requested not only an investigation be opened, but a response and a briefing on the status of this investigation by Sep. 25.

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