 A whistleblower from an ICE detention center in Georgia is sounding the alarm about a practice that should absolutely shake everyone to their cores. This is from Law and Crime. Jerry Lamb reports several legal advocacy groups on Monday filed a whistleblower complaint on behalf of a nurse at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement Detention Center documenting jarring medical neglect within the facility, including a refusal to test detainees for the novel coronavirus and an exorbitant rate of hysterectomies being performed on immigrant women. The nurse, Don Wooden, was employed at the Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia, which is operated by LaSalle Corrections, a private prison company. The complaint was filed with the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security by advocacy groups Project South, Georgia Detention Watch, Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, and South Georgia Immigrant Support Network. Local women came forward to tell Project South about what they perceived to be the inordinate rate at which women in ICDC were subjected to hysterectomies, a surgical operation in which all or part of the uterus is removed. Additionally, many of the immigrant women who underwent the procedure were reportedly confused when asked to explain why they had the surgery, with one detainee likening their treatment to prisoners in concentration camps. According to Wooden, ICDC consistently used a particular gynecologist outside the facility who almost always opted to remove all or part of the uterus of his female detainee patients. Everybody he sees has a hysterectomy just about everybody, Wooden said, adding that everybody's uterus cannot be that bad. Wooden, who is being represented in the matter by the Government Accountability Project, also confirmed that many of the detained women told her that they didn't understand why they were being forced to have the procedure. She explained that some of the nurses who didn't speak Spanish obtained consent from detainees by simply googling Spanish. The complaint details several accounts from detainees, including one woman who was not properly anesthetized during the procedure and heard the aforementioned doctor tell the nurse he had mistakenly removed the wrong ovary, resulting in her losing all reproductive ability. Another said she was scheduled for the procedure, but when she questioned why it was necessary, she was given at least three completely different answers. Another nurse then told her the procedure was to mitigate her heavy menstrual bleeding, which the woman had never experienced. When she explained that the nurse responded by getting angry and agitated and began yelling at her. Now at this same facility, the Intercept has a more detailed report about how the same nurse is alleging that they're refusing to test detainees and they're also under reporting COVID-19 cases at this particular facility. Now since the story broke, ICE has responded and basically they said that they're just going to defer to the OIG for an investigation and they say, quote, in general, anonymous unproven allegations made without any fact-checkable specifics should be treated with the appropriate skepticism they deserve. And I think that's fair. I think that we do need to be skeptical until we have more details. I think that there needs to be a thorough investigation. However, having said that, just getting the details about this story at face value is this believable to me, given what we know about ICE detention centers, especially at these private facilities, yeah, it's very believable. I think that when I read this, it seems like they're either being intentionally violent against these women because this would be an act of violence or they're just criminally negligent. But this is deeply disturbing, like reading this, some of the details I can't even believe it, like for them, to not speak Spanish and then get consent by googling Spanish, are we confident that they know what they're agreeing to? This is happening in America, allegedly. And I say allegedly because this hasn't been confirmed yet, but the things that happen at these detention centers, we already know it's horrible. Lawmakers who have visited these detention centers say that people are crying because they don't have soap or shampoo, they don't have space. And we know that COVID-19 has been an issue, there's been outbreaks at various facilities and it's not being treated with the proper care. And now they're saying at this facility they're underreporting COVID-19 cases and on top of that, they're performing mass hysterectomies is what the title says, mass hysterectomies. And there was controversy around the use of the term concentration camps. If this isn't a concentration camp, then I don't know what is, but this is deeply, deeply disturbing and I really hope that we get more information about this. And if we can confirm that this is true at this facility, then you know that other things are happening at other facilities that may be as disturbing, if not comparable to this. I don't even know what to say, like there's no words really to put this into perspective or to make it seem like it's real because it just seems like something that you hear about in a documentary that you watch on Netflix about something that happened in a different country like a long time ago. But it's happening now, yeah, so we have this information, this whistleblower is trying to get her story out there and we'll have to wait and see, you know, hold judgment for more details. Hopefully now, now, but the story itself at face value is disturbing to say the least.