“Where is the outcry?”: Staten Island’s Deafening Silence on Forced Sterilizations by Alia Danilo

On September 14, 2020 whistleblower Dawn Wooten, a former nurse at Irwin County Detention Center (ICDC), a Georgia ICE facility, reported that a doctor at the facility has been performing forced sterilizations on detained migrants, specifically removing all or parts of people’s uteruses. The disturbing reports of non-consensual sterilizations were quickly overshadowed in the following days with news of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death. But people of color on Staten Island have not forgotten; they are organizing to defend their reproductive rights and asking all Staten Islanders, regardless of color, party, and creed, to join the fight.

The twenty-seven-page long complaint filed by Project South, Georgia Detention Watch, Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, and South Georgia Immigrant Support Network, details the negligence and intentional medical mal-practice concerning the health and safety of detainees. ICDC has been ignoring CDC COVID-19 guidelines and violated ICE’s own Performance-Based National Detention Standards (PBNDS) for medical care. Detainees are not given adequate PPE, are crammed in spaces where social distancing is impossible, and are delayed or refused medical care and testing when they show symptoms of COVID-19.

Even though medical negligence is the norm, the ICDC still makes an effort to perpetrate acts of violence against immigrant bodies by performing unnecessary and non-consensual sterilizations. The complaint reports that detainees have been sent for procedures for symptoms such as heavy bleeding, which usually does not necessitate a hysterectomy. Wooten stated that the ICDC and cooperating gynecologist do not fully inform the women of the procedures and said that, “they’ve had hysterectomies and they don’t know why they went or why they’re going.” One woman ended up with a hysterectomy because the doctor “accidentally” removed the wrong ovary and then had to remove the cystic one.

“The hysterectomy issue is one of the most aggressive tortures against women of color today in America,” said Staten Island resident and advocate, Jennifer Gray-Brumskine. “Just imagine someone taking your whole uterus out, nothing wrong with it, and you can’t have kids anymore for the rest of your life simply because you are poor, simply because you’re a woman of color.”

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