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Eratosphere (https://www.ablemuse.com/erato/index.php)

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"...Irwin County Detention Center (ICDC) operated by the private prison company, LaSalle Corrections..."

Ah, yes, LaSalle Corrections. I am not surprised to hear credible accusations of neglect, and even of outright atrocities.

I recognize them among the many private prison bankrollers of Trump's "law and order" and "strong borders" stances:
https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/ne...on/4393366002/

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Five companies – GEO Group, CoreCivic, LaSalle Corrections, Management & Training Corp. and Immigration Centers of America – own and operate the largest ICE detention centers in the country.

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The private prison industry set highs for federal campaign contributions in the 2016 presidential election cycle, spending more than $1.7 million, then again in 2018 by spending more than $1.9 million. Most of the money went to Republican causes, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics and the Federal Election Commission.

Trump has received more than 25 times the amount of contributions that President Barack Obama received over his entire eight years in office – $969,000 to Trump and $38,000 to Obama. The industry donated to people inside Trump’s inner circle, including Vice President Mike Pence, former Energy Secretary Rick Perry and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley while each served as governor of their home states.

Private prison companies spent millions more in federal lobbying efforts and hired people in Trump’s orbit, including former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who works at the White House, and Brian Ballard, Trump’s former campaign finance chief in the critical swing state of Florida.

“This is their moment,” said Silky Shah, executive director of the Detention Watch Network, a group that advocates against detaining migrants. “They’re thinking, ‘We don’t know how long Trump is going to be in office, so let’s get all the money to him and to Republicans and solidify ourselves.’ ”

Private prisons. What an obscenity.

Aaron, this seems to be a brand new story, like hours old. If the reports of the whistleblower, Dawn Wooten, are true, that detainees are being subjected to unnecessary hysterectomies, they are some of the most frightening and disturbing things I’ve ever read. Surely the story can’t be buried and just end with the “facility” issuing this bland statement: “We are deeply committed to delivering high-quality, culturally responsive services in safe and humane environments“. This needs to be properly investigated, by some sort of Human Rights organisation, and as quickly as possible. It’s truly horrible. And if it turns out to be true, surely to God it should be the lead story in every news report in the country, and a clear commitment to closure of these places be at top of the agenda of issues to pressure the Democrats with. These awful places, run for fucking profit, need to be back on the political agenda anyway.

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D) Detained immigrants and ICDC nurses report high rates of hysterectomies done to immigrant women.

Several immigrant women have reported to Project South their concerns about how many women have received a hysterectomy while detained at ICDC. One woman told Project South in 2019 that Irwin sends many women to see a particular gynecologist outside the facility but that some women did not trust him. She also stated that “a lot of women here go through a hysterectomy” at ICDC. More recently, a detained immigrant told Project South that she talked to five different women detained at ICDC between October and December 2019 who had a hysterectomy done. When she talked to them about the surgery, the women “reacted confused when explaining why they had one done.” The woman told Project South that it was as though the women were “trying to tell themselves it’s going to be OK.” She further said: “When I met all these women who had had surgeries, I thought this was like an experimental concentration camp. It was like they’re experimenting with our bodies.”

Ms. Wooten also expressed concern regarding the high numbers of detained immigrant women at ICDC receiving hysterectomies. She stated that while some women have heavy menstruation or other severe issues that would require hysterectomy, “everybody’s uterus cannot be that bad.” Ms. Wooten explained:
“Everybody he sees has a hysterectomy—just about everybody. He’s even taken out the wrong ovary on a young lady [detained immigrant woman]. She was supposed to get her left ovary removed because it had a cyst on the left ovary; he took out the right one. She was upset. She had to go back to take out the left and she wound up with a total hysterectomy. She still wanted children—so she has to go back home now and tell her husband that she can’t bear kids... she said she was not all the way out under anesthesia and heard him [doctor] tell the nurse that he took the wrong ovary.”

Ms. Wooten also stated that detained women expressed to her that they didn’t fully understand why they had to get a hysterectomy. She said: “I’ve had several inmates tell me that they’ve been to see the doctor and they’ve had hysterectomies and they don’t know why they went or why they’re going.” And if the immigrants do understand what they’re getting done, “some of them a lot of times won’t even go, they say they’ll wait to get back to their country to go to the doctor.”

The rate at which the hysterectomies have occurred have been a red flag for Ms. Wooten and other nurses at ICDC. Ms. Wooten explained:

“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. What in the world.”

Intertwined with the issue of the reported high rates of hysterectomies is the issue of proper informed consent. Regarding the hysterectomies, Ms. Wooten explained: “These immigrant women, I don’t think they really, totally, all the way understand this is what’s going to happen depending on who explains it to them.” Ms. Wooten stated that the sick call nurse tries to communicate with the detained immigrants and speak Spanish to detained immigrants by simply googling Spanish or by asking another detained immigrant to help interpret rather than using the language line as medical staff are supposed to.

One detained immigrant reported to Project South that staff at ICDC and the doctor’s office did not properly explain to her what procedure she was going to have done. She reported feeling scared and frustrated, saying it “felt like they were trying to mess with my body.” When she asked what was being done to her body, she was given three different responses by three different individuals. She was originally told by the doctor that she had an ovarian cyst and was going to have a small twenty-minute procedure done drilling three small holes in her stomach to drain the cyst. The officer who was transporting her to the hospital told her that she was receiving a hysterectomy to have her womb removed. When the hospital refused to operate on her because her COVID-19 test came back positive for antibodies, she was transferred back to ICDC where the ICDC nurse said that the procedure she was going to have done entailed dilating her vagina and scraping tissue off. The nurse first told the detained immigrant she was going to get this procedure done because she had heavy bleeding, but then told her it was because she had a thick womb. The woman quickly responded that she never had heavy bleeding in her life and was never told by the doctor that she had a thick womb. Instead she stated that the doctor had described an entirely different procedure that did not involve scraping her vagina. She stated: “I tried to explain to her that something isn’t right; that procedure isn’t for me.” The nurse responded by getting angry and agitated and began yelling at her. She told Project South that seeing the nurse’s nervous and angry response confirmed “that something was not right.”

The story is outrageous and probable. However, many people have become inured to atrocity. Outrageous news becomes lost in a sea of outrageous news. Institutions are not expected to behave morally, even by those sections of society that have traditionally been served by them, much less by those long marginalized. Stories of horror are used as political weapons, to be believed, scoffed at or ignored by stripe of allegiance, with true and fabricated stories standing on equal footing. The institutions of oversight have become corruptly partisan.

Great damage has been done to the USA's idea of itself. In part it may have woken to recognize what has long been true. Anger and defiance may be products of shame. The president and his party are symptoms of an infected wound. What might have been hidden is now done openly and with impunity. This story may break across front pages but that probably won't budge the needle in political fortunes or societal direction.

There is too much fake news mixed into things to have much trust in the news, especially when it is this close to an election. "Fake until proven unfake" is the safer approach to news now a days.

Ron, what you say, depressingly, probably has a lot of truth to it, but I suppose people can only keep trying to weed out some justice and hope from the morass.

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There is too much fake news mixed into things to have much trust in the news, especially when it is this close to an election. "Fake until proven unfake" is the safer approach to news now a days

But Kevin, this story is so sickening surely the emphasis should be on an assumption of its truth and the necessity that it be fully investigated, rather than dismissal with this verbal shrug. Fake news and partisan exaggeration exists across the political
divide, yes, but adopting a "guilty till proven innocent" attitude to news involving blatant human rights abuses seems the height of cynicism.

The Guardian have picked up the story now.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.the...-irwin-georgia

It’s important to stay mentally sober just before elections. The potential for decent rehabilitation and care giving in private detention centers exists, and in some cases at least it could easily exceed that of the standard bureaucratic regimes in governmental institutions, federal, state, and local.

That said, they have to be run to make a profit, and the downside of that is very steep. Prisons of some sort for hazardous people are as much a public need as public roads, a public postal service, and governmentally operated military. Private prisons have as much or more potential for secret abuse than private armies. They should be very temporary at best. At worst, they have the potential to become awful.

Keep your eyes on the road and your hands properly placed on the steering wheel. Be ready to stop on a dime. Flash your blinkers at any vehicle crowding from the rear.

Think. Think again. Think once more. That doesn’t mean see no evil.

I’m bailing from this thread.

I just wanted to come back to note that coerced and/or improperly informed sterilization has been a common practise for indigenous people in many health centres in Canada. I think that this practice, at least, has ceased and is considered broadly wrong now. (Lest my previous comment be read as smug and condemning from my Canadian-ness.)

Nancy Pelosi has called for an investigation into the Whistleblower Complaint on Massive Health Care Abuse at ICE Detention Centers. Rightfully so. To not investgate a crime as egregious as that alleged would be a crime. That would be like someone phoning the police that they were robbed and the department dismissing the claim outright.