The federal agency known as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) just somehow accomplished the impossible: it got worse.
Last week, Dawn Wooten, a former nurse at an ICE facility in Georgia, blew the whistle on the unusually high number of hysterectomies being performed at the facility.
In her official statement, she told stories of the unfortunate women whose rights to bodily autonomy had been stripped away. “Everybody [the doctor] see has a hysterectomy,” she claimed.
One woman had both of her ovaries removed after her doctor “accidentally” removed her healthy ovary along with her diseased one. Another woman was given three different explanations as to why she needed surgery, none of them corresponding with what the woman knew about her body.
Many other women were unable to understand what was happening due to the lack of Spanish-speaking personnel.
None of the women consented to the procedures.
Wooten’s full statement includes many other instances of unsafe conditions in the ICE facility — COVID-19 precautions are inexistent, hygiene equipment is rarely distributed and one immigrant described the medical unit as “dirty and with animals like ants and insects” — but it’s the allegations of forced hysterectomies that disturbed me the most.
I was immediately reminded of the eugenics policies in Nazi Germany, of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, of the widespread sterilization of Native women in the 1970s and of the countless other historical examples of non-consensual medical procedures aimed at curbing the proliferation of “undesirable” populations.
None of the top “pro-life” voices in Congress have condemned the forced hysterectomies, despite being so vocal about other supposed infringements against unborn lives. Nor have they said anything about their precious tax dollars being spent on unnecessary and unwanted hysterectomies despite vehemently opposing the allocation of any government funds to life-saving hysterectomies for women who actually want them.
As an agency, ICE is inhumane, abusive and racist. It preys on the most vulnerable people in America under the ostensible pretense of “protecting” the country. The truth is, ICE is a greater threat to America than anyone detained in any of their facilities. It serves no other purpose than to dehumanize and terrorize asylum seekers and it deserves immediate abolition.
To anyone crying that ICE is essential to keep America functioning, consider this: if you were alive at any point before 2003, you have successfully lived in a nation without ICE.
And to anyone still convinced, despite the human rights abuses, that ICE keeps Americans safe against illegal immigration, violent crime along the border has spiked in response to increased border patrol — all for the cool price of $8.4 billion a year.
ICE’s budget, which could otherwise go to helping victims of Hurricane Laura and the ongoing wildfires on the West coast through FEMA, is instead spent on separating families, terrorizing children and mutilating women’s bodies. It is a colossal stain on America’s legacy, one that will make future generations look back and think, “How could we have ever let that happen?”
I’m still trying to figure that out myself.
Cécile Girard is a 20-year-old psychology junior from Lake Charles.
