A hospital in Georgia is pushing back on allegations that mass hysterectomies were carried out on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees in the Irwin County Detention Center. Irwin County Hospital, which serves the Ocilla jail, countered claims by a whistleblower and a radical group called Project South by announcing that only two were carried out there since 2017, and with consent.
As a follow-up, Republican U.S. Reps. Austin Scott and Doug Collins of Georgia sent a letter urging the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) to also consider disputing whistleblower Dawn Wooten and Project South’s allegations.
“Project South’s complaint, which relied on several unsubstantiated, secondhand accounts and Ms. Wooten’s own view of operations at the Center, was quickly refuted by individuals at both the Irwin County Hospital and Immigrations and Custom Enforcement who have made clear that the group’s claim of mass hysterectomies is unsupported by hospital and ICE records,” they wrote. “Despite these facts, Democrat Members of Congress and the media have seized on Ms. Wooten’s claim that the doctor in question is a ‘uterus collector’ who takes ‘all their uteruses out or he’s taken their tubes out’, leading congressional leaders to accept Project South’s claims as fact, despite the increasing evidence demonstrating Ms. Wooten’s claims are, at best, exaggerated and, at worst, completely fabricated.” Scott and Collin also wrote:
“Given the fact that Project South openly characterizes the U.S. government’s immigration laws as ‘draconian’ and ‘racist’, it is safe to assume this organization has a vested interest in furthering Ms. Wooten’s allegations in an effort to shut down the facility.
“In fact, Project South boasts a goal of ‘shutting down immigration centers’, including their effort starting in 2017 to ‘reiterate the demand for both’ the Stewart Detention Center and the Irwin County Detention Center – what they believe to be ‘two of the worst immigration detention centers in the country’ – be shut down. Project South’s website also boasts their ‘free legal representation’ of immigrants under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Joint Terrorism Task Forces and their ‘abolish ICE’ agenda. Given their mission, it is abundantly clear that Project South’s number one objective is to bring attention to any claims – despite the fact that such claims may be fabricated – that may further their radical, anti-law enforcement agenda.”
