Torture by ultrasound
Immigrants in a US detention facility endured excessive, unnecessary gynecological procedures, often without consent, according to a bipartisan Senate investigation that offers the starkest details yet of alleged mistreatment.
The probe centers on the Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia but raises red flags about inadequate safeguards throughout the immigration detention system, a senior Senate official said in an exclusive interview with Bloomberg Government before the release of the findings. […]
The investigation builds on earlier scrutiny of the privately run Georgia facility following allegations from a whistleblower who said a doctor contracted by the detention center had performed gynecological procedures on detainees without their consent. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas halted US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s use of the facility last year.
Senate investigators reviewed hundreds of thousands of pages of medical records and related documents, and determined immigrants at the Irwin County center were subjected to unnecessary transvaginal ultrasounds, contraceptive injections, and dilation and curettage procedures, the Senate official said. The report also highlights repeated failures by detention officials to obtain informed consent from detainees and a failure by ICE to vet medical providers and ensure detainees’ basic human rights, the official said.
According to the report, the doctor at the center of the Irwin County allegations accounted for 6.5% of OB-GYN visits among ICE detainees nationwide during a three-year period but performed more than 90% of the contraceptive injections and more than 82% of the dilation and curettage procedures, which remove uterine lining.
They may have been in this for the money, for the cruelty or maybe just for the kicks. Whatever it is, it’s twisted and gross. But it isn’t the only example of this sort of behavior. DHS had some nuts tracking menstrual cycles of detainees and requiring exams in other places. If you need any more evidence that there’s something deeply sick at the center of the right wing assault on women’s bodily autonomy, look no further.