Georgia facility with history of alleged medical abuse resumes immigration detention

This story was provided by 285 South media partner WABE.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is now holding immigrants at a South Georgia detention center that stopped detaining immigrants after a whistleblower reported medical abuse against women there. 

ICE confirmed to WABE that Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, began immigrant detention again on Friday, as immigration arrests across the country increase under the Trump Administration.

“I’m at a loss for words,” said Azadeh Shahshahani with the nonprofit Project South, one of the organizations that helped collect testimony from women about the alleged medical abuse.

Advocates were trying to survey detention centers to understand the spread of COVID when women began confiding in them. 

“Project South, along with other organizations, discovered evidence of women being subjected to abuse, medical abuse, and gynecological procedures without informed and full consent,” Shahshahani said. “This was also confirmed by a congressional report released by Senator Ossoff.”

Sen. Jon Ossoff led the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations at the time. The PSI report found female detainees were subjected to excessive, invasive, and often unnecessary gynecological procedures — including partial removal of the cervix  — often without a fully translated explanation or informed consent.

“Among the serious abuses this subcommittee has investigated during the last two years, subjecting female detainees to nonconsensual and unnecessary gynecological surgeries is one of the most nightmarish and disgraceful,” Ossoff said at the 2022 hearing. 

The investigation focused on Dr. Mahendra Amin, who was accused of performing these procedures. 

Patients were referred to Amin by the private prison company that ran Irwin, LaSalle Corrections. The report said he received referrals even though he had been dropped by an insurance provider due to multiple malpractice lawsuits and had been sued by the federal government for Medicare and Medicaid fraud.

ICE stopped detaining people at Irwin shortly after the whistleblower report came out, but Irwin County Detention Center remained open as a correctional facility for jailing U.S. citizens.

When it was an ICE facility, Irwin detained only women with a capacity of more than 1,000 people. ICE previously contracted with the private prison company LaSalle Corrections. ICE has yet to detail how many people will be detained there, what gender, and who will operate the facility.