'What Is Happening?' Whistleblower Dawn Wooten's Heartbreaking Tale Of Mass Hysterectomies

By Aliza Worthington — September 16, 2020

One woman was received a hysterectomy because she was told she had cancer, but she was never was given a biopsy for cancer.

One woman was told she needed a hysterectomy because she had Stage 4 cervical cancer, but after the procedure was informed by an oncologist that she never had cancer.

More than one woman came back bruised from their visits with this doctor.

One woman was given three different reasons for her hysterectomy, ultimately for a condition from which she did not suffer.

All of these women are ICE detainees in Georgia, and they were all patients of a gynecologist named Mahindra Amin.

Thanks to a hero whistleblower, Dawn Wooten, his crimes are coming to light and being investigated. This has been going on over the course of three years. THREE YEARS. For three years women who came to this country, seeking asylum or not, but all seeking a better life, have been jailed in unimaginable conditions and now, we're learning, subject to the whims of a sadist with a scalpel.

Julia Ainsley spoke to Nicolle Wallace about her reporting on new information coming out on the story, and Jacob Soboroff spoke with Ms. Wooten, who worked at the facility performing these unnecessary procedures.

SOBOROFF: You're quoted in the complaint as saying that's his specialty. He's the uterus collector. Is that how people referred to this doctor?

WOOTEN: That's how the detainees referred to this physician. They referred to him as -- I had a detainee who asked me, "Well, what is he doing, Miss Wooten, collecting all of our uteruses?" And I just look, I just looked at her puzzled, because I didn't have an answer. I didn't accompany them on the procedures and it's mind blowing and its mind boggling. When you get in your vehicle after a 12-hour shift and you cry yourself home, and you're the only one in the vehicle asking why, what is going on? What is happening? I don't have an answer. Why is nobody not hearing them, or taking them, so to speak, seriously? I don't have an answer shift after shift, then it gets to be where you don't want to report to work, because you don't have an answer. You don't have a reason and they're going to ask you why.

Ainsley then revealed new reporting that reveals that the company that runs the facility continued to use this doctor even after the attorneys for the women told them he was abusing the detainees at the facility. Attorneys claim they went to the leadership of the ICE facility and informed them, ""Look, you have a problem with this doctor. Our clients are afraid to go back to them. He's hurting these women." And they continued for years to keep using this gynecologist to perform this care," Ainsley reported.

Then Nicolle Wallace zeroed in on what magnifies the sadistic nature of this torture exponentially. She asked, "Julia, can you widen the lens on the medical care that is standard for female detainees? It sounds like a whole lot of gynecological care when we read about the complete and abject neglect around COVID."

Hm.

AINSLEY: Yeah, you're hitting it. These are the conversations I've been having all day, Nicolle. I mean, I've been talking to lawyers who say I have clients in detention who had diabetes and couldn't get their medication yet they were told to go back for a pap smear and go again when that seemed irregular seemed like they were getting way too much care for a gynecologist and perhaps doing very unnecessary procedures and not enough of what you would need in a short term detention situation. We know they aren't supposed to stay longer than six months. Why were they getting so much care on this one area? I will point out this doctor was part of a civil settlement with the justice department in 2015 where he and other doctors had to pay over $500,000 and a fine for fraudulent claims to Medicaid. So, that means we're already looking at a doctor who has at least been alleged to have tried to inflate his claims in order to get more money. That is the allegation here. Why was he doing so much work if as it seems a lot of these procedures were not necessary. I should also mention very tragic one of the lawyers described a woman of childbearing age who now has a hysterectomy that she perhaps did not need.

Here's where you can check your state's voting procedures and make sure your registration is up to date: VOTE.ORG