A nurse who raised alarms about conditions at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Georgia, including that it refused to test detainees for the coronavirus and that some detainees received questionable hysterectomies, said Tuesday that she decided to become a whistleblower so that detainees are treated better at the facility.
“Whenever you institutionalize people, I was brought up by the American dream that you treat people the way you want to be treated and you handle individuals as individuals,” Dawn Wooten said Tuesday at a news conference in Atlanta. “All I want is that people are treated and triaged medically correct and they’re treated in medical timeliness."
Wooten worked full time as a licensed practical nurse at the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, until being demoted in July.
She said Tuesday that she and other employees were not given sufficient personal protective equipment during her time there. Wooten, a single mother of five, said she has sickle cell disease and has been told that if she contracted the coronavirus, “I probably would not live.”
In a federal complaint filed Monday, a coalition of rights groups accused the detention center of committing “jarring medical neglect,” including failing to protect its detainees from coronavirus, red flags concerning a high rate of hysterectomies performed on detainees and fabricating medical records.
The 27-page complaint, filed with the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General, is based in part on Wooten’s allegations and on those from detainees at the facility.
ICE Spokeswoman Lindsay Williams said in a statement to NBC News on Tuesday the agency does not comment on matters presented to the Office of the Inspector General, but it takes all allegations seriously and defers to the inspector general regarding any potential investigation and results.
“That said, in general, anonymous, unproven allegations, made without any fact-checkable specifics, should be treated with the appropriate skepticism they deserve,” Williams said.
The agency said it is committed to the safety and welfare of those in its custody and its facilities are subject to regular inspections. The Irwin County Detention Center has repeatedly been found to operate in compliance with ICE’s performance standards, the agency said.
Comprehensive medical care is provided to all individuals in ICE custody and care decisions are made by medical personnel, not law enforcement, the agency said.
LaSalle Corrections, the private company that runs the detention center, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Wooten said in the complaint that she and other nurses were alarmed at the rate at which immigrant women at the facility were receiving hysterectomies, and called an unnamed gynecologist who worked outside the facility “the uterus collector.”
“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,” Wooten said, according to the complaint.
“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,” she said.
In one case, the doctor removed the wrong ovary from a detainee and she ended up having her other ovary removed and wound up with a total hysterectomy, Wooten said, according to the complaint.
"The new shocking revelations about the abuses against women's bodies must lead to the immediate closure of this horrid facility," Azadeh Shahshahani, legal and advocacy director at Project South, said in a statement. "ICE and the private prison corporation must be held accountable."
The facility houses immigrant detainees in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is a part of the Department of Homeland Security. It also houses inmates for Irwin County and the U.S. Marshals Service, according to The Associated Press.
The complaint cites both allegations from unnamed detained immigrants and Wooten.
Project South, Georgia Detention Watch, Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights and South Georgia Immigrant Support Network filed the complaint on behalf of detained immigrants at the center and Wooten.
Wooten was demoted in July from a full-time nurse to “as-needed” after missing work because she had coronavirus symptoms. She said she believes the demotion was in retaliation for raising coronavirus protocol concerns, according to the complaint.
She also said that there was not enough active testing of the immigrant detainees for the coronavirus and that the facility was not “reporting all these cases that are positive,” meaning the number of cases at the facility was possibly much higher than that reported by ICE.
The complaint said that men and women at the detention center “overwhelmingly reported not being tested for Covid-19 from March until August 18,” when those in the ICE facility were given the option to be tested.
A woman reported that 100 women slept in a unit where women “coughed, had fever and other discomforts, but officers did not listen to them when they reported their health problems,” and that they were never tested for Covid-19, according to the complaint.
“After demanding that the sick women be taken to the medical unit, she reported that the women were finally taken but were brought back within an hour and just given pain killers,” the complaint said.
Wooten also claimed that it was common practice for a sick call nurse to shred medical request forms from detainees requesting to go to the medical unit and fabricate records such as vital signs without seeing the patient seeking help, the complaint said.
ICE said in its statement that its epidemiologists have been continually tracking the outbreak, regularly updating its infection prevention and control protocols, and issuing guidance to staff for the management of potential exposure among detainees.
ICE said on its website that as of Sept. 13, there were 42 confirmed cases of Covid-19 among its detainees at Irwin County Detention Center, and 5,772 in all of its facilities, with six overall deaths.
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