ICE seeks to deport a migrant who was sterilized without her consent. Activists denounce that it is to "silence her"

WASHINGTON, DC— Immigrant Pauline Binam says she underwent a surgical operation against her will that sterilized her while in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody.

This Wednesday she is about to be deported to Cameroon, a country that has not been on her feet for almost three decades, to "silence" her complaint, according to activists in favor of the rights of immigrants.

At the last minute, Binam was taken off the plane for reasons that ICE has not disclosed.

Activists attribute it to their calls and messages to politicians: A group of 173 congressmen, led by Democrat Pramila Jayapal, demanded a broad investigation into accusations of hysterectomies of migrant women at the hands of a doctor dubbed "the uterus collector." .

Binam, 30, has been in ICE custody since 2017 in the Irwin detention center in Ocilla, Georgia, now engulfed in a political storm over

by

that doctor.

["A concentration camp experiment".

They denounce the sterilization of migrants in an ICE center]

If deported, Binam would leave behind an 11-year-old daughter, her parents and four siblings, to return to Cameroon, a country from where she emigrated to the United States when she was only 2 years old.

According to the Cameroonian American Council, Binam underwent an operation in which one of her fallopian tubes was removed without her consent.

Part of a psychiatric document, shared by the Mijente group, indicates that Binam had the surgery on August 28, 2019, and then she was "upset" because she was only waiting for a simple gynecological "dilation and curettage" operation.

Binam is still suffering the aftermath of that operation, according to activists leading a campaign for his release.

His case has come to light after Dawn Wooten, a nurse who worked at that ICE facility, filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Office of Inspector General about forced hysterectomies. to which several women were allegedly subjected

.

Wooten's accusations

Wooten's complaint, filed with the help of four civic groups spearheaded by Project South, further details the alleged lack of adequate protections against the coronavirus and a lack of general medical care.

Wooten told NBC that "on multiple occasions" several detainees asked her why they had hysterectomies and she had no answer.

The doctor, described in the complaint as the "uterus collector", declined to comment to the press.

In 2015, it reached a $ 520,000 settlement with the Justice Department following an investigation into fraud against the Medicaid and Medicare programs.

According to MSNBC, lawyers representing detainees at the Irwin facility indicated that there could be as many as 15 victims of these unnecessary or unauthorized procedures.

They demand center closure

There is no indication that it is a problem extended to other centers, although DHS has not yet said if it will open an investigation.

Activists and lawyers consulted today by Noticias Telemundo agreed in calling for the closure of the detention center in Georgia.

Sylvie Bello, founder and president of the American Cameroonian Council, affirmed that Binam's deportation is part of a strategy so that he cannot give testimony of what happened.

"ICE wants to deport her immediately because it knows that she would be a key witness, and ICE wants to cover her tracks," argued Bello, who called Wooten a "heroine."

"Pauline has been separated from her family for three years, her marriage disintegrated," and it was not until she filed a medical complaint that she found out what had actually been done to her, Bello explained.

"He definitely did not consent to have an organ removed, because there are many cultural and spiritual implications, and we do not know what else they did to him," Bello emphasized.

For her part, Azadeh Shahshahani, a lawyer and legal director for Project South, explained that her group has been documenting the poor conditions in Irwin for years, and that several women have suffered reprisals for making complaints.

"We hope that Congress will carry out a thorough and necessary investigation, and we will ask for that in the coming days, we hope that this will lead to the closure of that facility," said the lawyer.

ICE defends itself

ICE defended the protocols for the medical and gynecological care of immigrants in its custody, and stated that the facility in Irwin meets all established standards.

According to ICE, since 2018, the agency has only referred two Irwin cases to medical facilities for hysterectomy.

For its part, the LaSalle company, in charge of the detention center in Irwin, "firmly" denied Wooten's complaint, and insisted that it is "firmly committed to the health and well-being" of the detainees, it does not tolerate inappropriate behavior in its facilities, and "takes seriously" any allegation of abuse.

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, and other opposition leaders, as well as various groups defending human rights and immigrants, demanded an investigation of what happened at the center in Georgia.

Civil rights organization documents cases of abuse of immigrants in detention centers

Aug. 18, 202003: 11

Freedom for Pauline

Binam exhausted her options before the immigration courts and was locked up in the detention center in Georgia in 2017. Last March, she was transferred to the Montgomery Processing Center in Conroe, Texas, where she is awaiting deportation.

Binam entered the United States legally but, due to problems with the law in the past, she was detained by ICE.