Homeland Security’s leadership has asked its inspector general to speed a review of an ICE facility in Georgia where a whistleblower says a doctor is performing an exceptional number of hysterectomies on migrant women.
Ken Cuccinelli, the No. 2 official at the department, said an initial review found the allegations aren’t backed up by documentation.
But he told National Review that they want a full investigation completed quickly.
“You’d think that with medical procedures, [doctors] aren’t going to do that if they aren’t getting paid, and we’re not seeing any records of requests for payment or payment yet,” he told the magazine, calling it “virtually inconceivable that any of this could have been going on without multiple sets of records.”
He said the nature of the allegations has shifted, suggesting that undercuts the credibility.
But he said if true, it would be troubling, and “we’d be very concerned to correct them as quickly as possible.”
In a complaint filed earlier this week with the inspector general, Dawn Wooten, a licensed practical nurse, said the rate of the procedure at the Irwin County Detention Center raised red flags.
She said one particular gynecologist was at the center of the operations, and said some of the women didn’t understand why they were getting it. She called the doctor “the uterus collector.”
“Everybody’s uterus cannot be that bad,” she said according to the complaint, released by Project South and the Government Accountability Project.
She also reported some medical records are fabricated and there are unsanitary conditions and poor medical testing at the Irwin County Detention Center, run by LaSalle Corrections under a contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The hysterectomies allegation has reverberated across the country, with Democrats calling it an abominable abuse of migrant women’s rights.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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