House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is calling for an investigation into reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is presiding over the mass sterilization of immigrant women.
The top Democrat demanded a probe into uncorroborated claims that detainees at a privately-run ICE detention center have had had hysterectomies without their consent.
Pelosi calls for investigation
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has launched an investigation into the claims, which it denies, after Pelosi accused ICE of a “staggering abuse of human rights.”
“If true, the appalling conditions described in the whistleblower complaint — including allegations of mass hysterectomies being performed on vulnerable immigrant women — are a staggering abuse of human rights,” Pelosi said.
In a whistleblower complaint, Dawn Wooten, a former nurse at the Georgia facility, claimed that a doctor contracted by the Irwin County Detention Center is performing hysterectomies at an unusually high rate, and without consent from patients. Evoking Nazi Germany, Wooten likened the doctor to a “uterus collector.”
One detainee who says she spoke with five immigrants who said they had hysterectomies compared the facility to an “experimental concentration camp,” adding that the women seemed “confused” about why they had the procedure done.
DHS said, in part, that only two women at the center were referred for hysterectomies since 2018, and that “a medical procedure like a hysterectomy would never be performed against a detainee’s will.”
No corroboration
As Breitbart notes, left-wing sites like Slate and the Washington Post have pointed out that the claim has not been directly corroborated. An attorney for Project South told the Washington Post that the group had not spoken to anyone who received a forced hysterectomy.
“I didn’t speak to anyone who had one,” Priyanka Bhatt said. “But the things we have heard are concerning, and we need to find out more information.”
Nevertheless, in addition to Pelosi’s demand for a probe, 173 Democrats have signed a letter demanding answers by September 25.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who famously compared detention centers to Nazi camps last summer, said the unproven claims show that ICE should be abolished.
“It’s astounding that after a massive family separation operation, mass sexual assault of detainees, trapping immigrants in Covid-infected detention centers, and now reports of mass hysterectomies (which the US has done before), abolishing Ice is controversial. Where’s the line?” she said.
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