Did The U.S. Force Hysterectomies On Immigrant Women?

Allegations of the U.S. performing unwanted hysterectomies on immigrant women.

We have a coronavirus pandemic in the United States. It has killed over 240,000 Americans. It has also infected over 8 millions. There economic uncertainty in the country. Companies are going out of business, shaving hours and cutting labor. There are wildfires, hurricanes, earthquakes, deadlier tornadoes, floods and the coronavirus. It's impacting the climate. We have a civil unrest in the United States due to gun violence. Police are shooting unarmed people of color. Trump and his allies are running on white nationalism has sparked racial divides. It has led to unrest in cities across the United States. Even with the pandemic, Americans are protesting. Now with the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Republicans have decided to ignore the CARES Act extension and the folks struggling to survive the COVID-19 pandemic to jam through a Supreme Court justice. We're only less than 50 days away from the U.S. Election. Trump, Republicans, anti-Biden leftists and Russia are determined to sow discourse and distractions in this election. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are not the president and vice president, but in the minds of these distractions, they're responsible for most of the problems in the country.

The United Nations have long complained about the actions of the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Brazil. These countries have gotten away with so many unethical things and never face criminal charges for these actions.

We may have committed violation against human rights! It's a damn shame that the United States abstains itself from the United Nations Tribunal Courts. Because if this is true, the world is going to look at the U.S. even more negatively.

I will say that the U.S. has a horrible reputation of divisiveness.

A woman of color blew the whistle on the Department of Homeland Security and their horrible treatment of undocumented women in their custody.

Members of Congress and the DHS inspector general are pressing acting Secretary Chad Wolf and top officials in the Donald J. Trump administration for inquires to the allegations that detainees underwent unnecessary gynecological surgeries -- including full hysterectomies --- without their consent.

Protesters at the Irwin Detention Center demanding accountability.

Immigration attorneys said they were interviewing women this week to determine how widespread the problem might be with some clients describing experiences where parts of their Fallopian tube and their ovaries were removed while custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

A woman from Cuba became one of the victims of this Georgia doctor who literally performed medical practices on women who barely spoke English and didn't know what they were being treated for.

This alleged butcher is named Dr. Mahendra Amin. He is a gynecologist who is allegedly performing unwanted hysterectomies and other procedures on women in detainment centers. He actions harmed women bodies and jeopardize their ability to have children.

It's a sleazy attempt by Trump and Republicans to keep immigrant women from giving birth to children while in the United States. If a child is born in the United States, they are considered American citizens by birth. Trump's white nationalist platform is calling for the end of birthright citizenship.

So the Associated Press did a review of four women and interviewed their lawyers. They detail Amin performed surgeries and other procedures on detained immigrants that they never sought or didn't fully understand. Although some procedures could be justified based on problems documented in the records, the women's lack of consent and knowledge raised severe legal and ethical issues, lawyers and medical experts said.

One woman from Cuba said she was a victim.

Mileidy Cardentey Fernandez, 39 is a Cuban who shared her scars on her abdomen. There were three small, circular marks. She was told that she would undergo an operation to treat her ovarian cysts, but a month later, she's still not sure on what procedure she got. After she requested for her medical records, it was the Irvin County Detention Center that gave her more than 100 pages showing a diagnosis of cysts but nothing from the day of her surgery.

"The only thing they told me was: 'You're going to go to sleep and when you wake up, we will have finished,'" Cardentey said this week in a phone interview.

Amin had performed surgeries or other gynecological treatment on at least eight women who were detained at the Irwin County Detention Center since 2017, including one hysterectomy.

Andrew Free, an immigration attorney said that he wants an open investigation into the facility and obtain medical records from Amin.

"The indication is there's a systematic lack of truly informed and legally valid consent to perform procedures that could ultimately result -- intentionally or unintentionally -- in sterilization," Free said.

The AP's review did not find evidence of mass hysterectomies as alleged in a widely shared complaint filed by a nurse at the detention center. Dawn Wooten blew the whistle on corruption and the feds are trying to silence her and deny they've performed this.

Dawn Wooten speaks to the protesters. She says the U.S. is treating immigrants like guinea pigs.

Wooten said that many of these women were taken to an unnamed gynecologist whom she labeled the "uterus collector" because of how many hysterectomies he performed.

The complaint sparked a furious reaction from congressional Democrats and an investigation by the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general. It also evoked comparisons to previous government-sanctioned efforts in the U.S. to sterilized people to supposedly improve society -- victims who were disproportionately poor, mentally disabled, American Indian, Black and other people of color. Thirty-three states had forced sterilization programs in the 20th Century.

But a lawyer who helped file the complaint said she never spoke to any women who had hysterectomies. Priyanka Bhatt, staff attorney at the advocacy group Project South, told The Washington Post that she included the hysterectomy allegations because she wanted to trigger an investigation to determine if they were true.

"I have a responsibility to listen to the women I've spoken with," Bhatt told the AP on Friday. She said one woman alleged that she was repeatedly pressured to have a hysterectomy and that authorities said they would not pay for her to get a second opinion.

Amin told The Intercept, which first reported Wooten's complaint, that he has only performed one or two hysterectomies in the past three years. His attorney, Scott Grubman, said in a statement: "We look forward to all of the facts coming out, and are confident that once they do, Dr. Amin will be cleared of any wrongdoing."

Grubman did not respond to new questions Thursday.

In a statement Friday, ICE Acting Director Tony Pham said: "If there is any truth to these allegations, it is my commitment to make the corrections necessary to ensure we continue to prioritize the health, welfare and safety of ICE detainees."

LaSalle Corrections, which operates the jail, said in a statement that it "strongly refutes these allegations and any implications of misconduct."

Women housed at Irwin County Detention Center who needed a gynecologist were typically taken to Amin, according to medical records provided to the AP by Free and lawyer Alexis Ruiz, who represents Cardentey. Interviews with detainees and their lawyers suggest some women came to fear the doctor.

Undocumented immigrants face sexual abuse, illness and abuse while in ICE custody.

Records reviewed by the AP show one woman was given a psychiatric evaluation the same day she refused to undergo a surgical procedure known as dilation and curettage. Commonly known as a D&C, it removes tissue from the uterus and can be used as a treatment for excessive bleeding. A note written on letterhead from Amin's office said the woman was concerned.

According to a written summary of her psychiatric evaluation, the woman said, "I am nervous about my upcoming procedure."

The summary says she denied needing mental health care and added: "I am worried because I saw someone else after they had surgery and what I saw scared me."

The AP also reviewed records for a woman who was given a hysterectomy. She reported irregular bleeding and was taken to see Amin for a D&C. A lab study of the tissue found signs of early cancer, called carcinoma. Amin's notes indicate the woman agreed 11 days later to the hysterectomy.

Free, who spoke to the woman, said she felt pressured by Amin and "didn't have the opportunity to say no" or speak to her family before the procedure.

Doctors told the AP that a hysterectomy could have been appropriate due to the carcinoma, though there may have been less intrusive options available.

Lawyers for both women asked that their names be withheld for fear of retaliation by immigration authorities.

In another case, Pauline Binam, a 30-year-old woman who was brought to the U.S. from Cameroon when she was 2, saw Amin after experiencing an irregular menstrual cycle and was told to have a D&C, said her attorney, Van Huynh.

When she woke up from the surgery, Huynh said, she was told Amin had removed one of her two fallopian tubes, which connect the uterus to the ovaries and are necessary to conceive a child. Binam's medical records indicate that the doctor discovered the tube was swollen.

"She was shocked and sort of confronted him on that - that she hadn't given her consent for him to proceed with that," Huynh said. "The reply that he gave was they were in there anyway and found there was this problem."

Women in detention centers are abused by ICE.

While women can potentially still conceive with one intact tube and ovary, doctors who spoke to the AP said removal of the tube was likely unnecessary and should never have happened without Binam's consent.

The doctors also questioned how Amin discovered the swollen tube because performing a D&C would not normally involve exploring a woman's fallopian tubes.

Dr. Julie Graves, a family medicine and public health physician in Florida, called the process "absolutely abhorrent."

"It's established U.S. law that you don't operate on everything that you find," she said. "If you're in a teaching hospital and an attending physician does something like that, it's a scandal and they are fired."

Binam was on the verge of deportation Wednesday, but ICE delayed it after calls from members of Congress and a request for an emergency stay by her lawyer.

Grubman, Amin's lawyer, said in a statement that the doctor "has dedicated his adult life to treating a high-risk, underserved population in rural Georgia."

Amin completed medical school in India in 1978 and his residency in gynecology in New Jersey. He has practiced in rural Georgia for at least three decades, according to court filings. State corporate records also show Amin is the executive of a company that manages Irwin County Hospital.

In 2013, state and federal investigators sued Amin, the hospital authority of Irwin County and a group of other doctors over allegations they falsely billed Medicare and Medicaid.

The lawsuit alleged that nurses at Irwin County Hospital were trained to follow a doctor's "standing orders" - described as "scripted procedures based on the nurse's diagnosis." That meant nurses often decided treatment plans, but they were billed to Medicaid and Medicare as if they doctor did, the lawsuit said.

Investigators linked a standing order to Amin, alleging he required "certain tests always be run on pregnant patients, without any medical evaluation and regardless of her condition."

The lawsuit was settled in 2015 with no known sanctions against Amin. The hospital paid a $520,000 settlement, saying no doctor paid any of it and had been "released from any and all liability."

The Georgia Composite Medical Board lists Amin as a doctor in good standing with no public disciplinary action. Board executive director LaSharn Hughes said records of investigations were confidential under state law.

State prosecutors didn't refer Amin to the medical board after the billing lawsuit because it didn't involve specific allegations of patient harm, said Katie Byrd, a spokeswoman for Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr.