"Disturbing Allegations at ICE Center", that's not news, right? It's sort of the definition of ICE centers. Some of the allegations, particularly the ones about hysterectomies being performed without informed consent, started appearing on social media sites a few days ago. That seemed a bit over the top, and I was going to wait until it appeared on a reputable news site before commenting on it.
Well, how about BBC? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54160638
Or USA Today: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/09/15/ice-jail-georgia-nurse-questions-medical-care-detainees/5801521002/
Of course appearing on these news sites doesn't mean the allegations are proven. It does mean that there is enough "there" there that an investigation needs to happen. In addition to the hysterectomies, the allegations include that there was no active testing for COVID, also that records and patient complaints were shredded.
In all of the stories, the whistleblower nurse, Dawn Wooten, is named. The doctor or doctors in charge are not. From CBS:
"The facility in Ocilla, about 200 miles south of Atlanta, houses men and women detainees for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as inmates for the U.S. Marshals Service and Irwin County....LaSalle Corrections, which owns and operates Irwin County Detention Center under contract, did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Monday.
"...While the 27-page complaint filed by the Government Accountability Project and advocacy group Project South quotes unidentified detainees extensively, it also includes detailed comments from Wooten. The complaint says Wooten was demoted after missing work with coronavirus symptoms, which she believes was retaliation for raising questions about addressing COVID-19....Wooten said the facility declined to use two rapid-testing COVID-19 machines that ICE purchased for $14,000 each. No medical staff had been trained on them and she saw the machines used only once."
"Project South Staff Attorney Priyanka Bhatt remarked that, "For years, advocates in Georgia have raised red flags about the human rights violations occurring inside the Irwin County Detention Center. Ms. Wooten's whistleblowing disclosures confirm what detained immigrants have been reporting for years: gross disregard for health and safety standards, lack of medical care, and unsanitary living conditions at Irwin."
"...We call on DHS to conduct an investigation into the Irwin County Detention Center in order to protect the health and safety of the detained immigrants and the workers there.
Yeah, just another disgruntled Trump era whistleblower. At the rate the Trump administration is producing them, it will have to create GS (pay scale) categories for whistleblowers.
ReplyDeleteThe latest charges would be unbelievable if we didn't already know ICE has and continues to have unbelievable things proven about it.
God, what next? I am so worn down from the daily cluster of three or four travesties involving lies, illegal policies screwing over somebody's human rights, or a Trump associate going ape on the "left wing" that I often feel unmoored from reality.
ReplyDeleteWhich is more anti-Catholic? Forced or surreptitious sterilization or unforced voluntary abortion? I would also surmise that the majority of the women sterilized are Catholic.
ReplyDeleteLet's agree that both are really bad.
DeleteDoing these bad things at the direction of the government puts another Orwellian spin on it.
Much, rightly, is being made in the conservative media of China's mistreatment of its Uighur minority. While the parallels aren't apt in every respect, the fact that the US government is running a series of camps to oppress and terrorize a vulnerable minority is too close for comfort. And if forced hysterectomies really are being administered, that's much too close for comfort.
I am on a partial news fast. I’m worn out. Every day there is some new horror exposed. Yet the trump cult members remain moved. God help our country.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't be surprised if there had also been involuntary abortions. I can't for the life of me figure out what the point of inflicting needless surgery on women is, except just sheer wanton cruelty. Maybe some kind of eugenics thing?
ReplyDeleteWe'd better hear some Christian and Catholic outcry over this.
The more I read about this story, the more I think I would go slowly about jumping to conclusions about the hysterectomies and piling on assumptions about involuntary abortions.
ReplyDeleteThe Government Accountability Project's news release focuses primarily on documented evidence of negligence in covid19 precautions.
I'm a separate release, GAP seems to indicate that Project South is the organization that is more involved with Wooten's claims about the hysterectomies. Project South was founded over concerns about ethnic genocide or genocidally motivated activities.
The primary sources suggest that a concerningly high number hysterectomies have been performed without informed consent. No one, including Wooten, the whistleblower, has said anything about abortions. While details are still emerging, Project South has documented five hysterectomies by detainee complainants since last year. The facility can house up to 1,200 individuals.
One unnecessary hysterectomy is one too many. But if the truth matters, then we have to be cautious in running with quotes about concentration camps, medical experiments, and "everybody" having hysterectomies before any investigation is complete.
In addition, it appears that one doctor is responsible for the hysterectomies. So it's a leap to assume that sterilizing women is ICE policy.
For now.
https://whistleblower.org/in-the-news/cbs46-news-atlanta-whistleblower-alleges-high-rate-of-hysterectomies-and-medical-neglect-at-ice-facility/
Jean, your cautions are timely. Most of the folks here are of split minds, I'd guess, partly hoping the allegations are not true and partly hoping they will be the last straw for some of the "Christian" followers of The Don. We are perfectly poised, then, to be taken in and then exposed as gullible dupes of the leftist Marxist paradigm.
DeleteBut denials have lost their purchasing power with this administration. The Atlantic reports four UNNAMED sources say Trump disparaged the military. He makes it a, "Who are you going to believe, four people the reporter made up or my honest face?" Then AP and Fox (!!!) find people confirming or adding to the story, and he continues to deny. Now, we know he insulted the Gold Star family that called him out in 2016, that he said the generals are "a bunch of dopes and babies" and that he knows more about war than they do, that he made a career of insulting John McCain, even in death, and that he trashed the brains and character of generals he hired after they no longer worked for him and has pardoned war criminals. With that background, the grain of salt with which we have to greet unnamed sources loses its flavor.
Now we are dealing with an organization that, inter alia, has broken up families and, in multiple cases, deported children without parents and parents without children; that has given toddlers beds of concrete, that has loaded up aircraft with Covid patients and non-patients and sent them home, where they would be getting worse medical attention than they would have gotten here -- if we had given them any. We know we are talking about agents who pose as policemen and claim they don't need no stinkin' warrants to enter a house and "investigate" everyone in it. Now, against that barely believable background, we hear another unbelievable story about ICE and CBS.
We know we will be promised investigations. But with Bob Barr as investigator-in-chief, the tendency has been to ignore the scandal and investigate the people who brought it to light, even to the point of threatening one with prison after he published a pre-cleared book.
So, yeah, the truth does matter. It would be a lot easier to see if people would not dump a bucket of sleaze on it every time it shows its lovely head.
Thanks, Jean and Tom, you are of course right to throw a note of caution about being too quick to believe the formerly unbelievable.
DeleteAs Tom said, the truth "...would be a lot easier to see if people would not dump a bucket of sleaze on it every time it shows its lovely head."
We already know a lot of the stuff ICE has done, that they don't even deny. If that isn't among the load of last straws for decent people, even if the allegations about unnecessary hysterectomies prove true, they are unlikely to make any difference.
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DeleteI think it's all entirely believeable. The U.S. has a long history of experimenting with people--letting black men die of syphilis and giving veterans LSD.
DeleteI hope I don't have my head in the sand, and I'm certainly not Little Mary Sunshine about the Greatness of America.
But believable does not = true.