Seattle Rep. Jayapal Leads Call for DHS to Investigate "Uterus Collector" Complaint

[TexasTowelie]

On Tuesday Seattle Rep. Pramila Jayapal (and a couple other reps from California and New York) sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Cuffari demanding he investigate this "uterus collector" complaint coming out of an ICE detention facility down in Georgia. The letter, which was signed by 173 other members of Congress, came on the day House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also called for an investigation.

In the complaint, a human rights group called Project South said a detainee told them a doctor performed five hysterectomies on other detainees last year. Dawn Wooten, one of the whistleblowers in the complaint, said, "We’ve questioned among ourselves, like, 'Goodness he’s taking everybody’s stuff out'…That’s his specialty, he’s the uterus collector. I know that’s ugly…is he collecting these things or something...Everybody he sees, he’s taking all their uteruses out or he’s taken their tubes out."

The Intercept interviewed current detainees, advocates for detainees, and a staff member at the jail, and they all told similar stories. Wooten said to the Intercept "that more than 20 women had undergone hysterectomies in the last six years." Prism Reports identified the gynecologist as Mahendra Amin.

After a sit-down with three attorneys representing the detainees, Rep. Jayapal said in another release, "It appears that there may be at minimum 17 to 18 women who were subjected to unnecessary medical gynecological procedures from just this one doctor, often without appropriate consent or knowledge, and with the clear intention of sterilization."

Read more: https://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2020/09/16/28834217/seattle-rep-jayapal-leads-call-for-dhs-to-investigate-uterus-collector-complaint

[Mersky]

1. Jayapal and Jackson Lee interceded to prevent one such woman from being deported this morning!

Inquiry Ordered Into Claims Immigrants Had Unwanted Gynecology Procedures

-snip-

The other lawyer, Ms. Huynh, said her client Pauline Binam underwent a procedure for an ovarian cyst in 2019 that involved general anesthesia. When Ms. Binam woke up, Ms. Huynh said, Dr. Amin told her that he had removed part of her fallopian tube and that she would be unable to conceive without in vitro fertilization.

Ms. Binam, who was 29 at the time of the procedure, told Ms. Huynh that she would never have consented had she known there was a risk of infertility.

Ms. Huynh said her client, who has since been transferred to an ICE detention facility in Texas, had not had a period at all since the procedure. Ms. Binam was nearly deported on Wednesday morning, but two Democratic members of Congress, Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas and Pramila Jayapal of Washington, rushed to contact ICE, and Ms. Binam was removed from the plane before it took off.

“We need her to testify,” Ms. Jayapal said. “This story sends a chill through any woman.”

-snip-

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/16/us/ICE-hysterectomies-whistleblower-georgia.html


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Also, Jackson Lee spoke of stopping the deportation on Chris Hayes’ show this evening.