There were bandages on my stomach and pain on my sides and under my navel, but no one would tell me what surgery I’d been subjected to. When I awoke from surgery, I was back at Irwin. I assumed it was about my high blood pressure, but when we arrived at the hospital, I was told I was getting surgery to remove the cysts. Then, weeks later, I was woken up early one morning and told I would be going to see a doctor. A doctor told me that I had cysts in my stomach that needed to be treated, but there had not been any follow-up. One day, I fell, hit my head, fainted and woke up in the medical unit but was told I wouldn’t be taken to a hospital because I didn’t have “any broken bones.”īut the worst was yet to come. The stress of being confined and separated from my children led to spikes in blood pressure and vision problems. And then they took me into custody and sent me to Irwin afterwards. I kept asking them to get the dogs off me, but they waited until my legs and fingers were severely bitten. When I was stopped again, prior to my arrest, I was attacked by police dogs who bit me while the officers looked on. When I refused to reveal information about other immigrants, I was told I would be locked up for a long time and would be forced to have my baby inside a prison. Once, when I was pregnant, I was stopped and searched because they were looking for undocumented Jamaicans in the area. Georgia’s governor ran on a platform to “round up criminal illegals and take ’em home.” … Because I was not just an immigrant, but am also Black and speak with a distinct Jamaican accent, I felt especially vulnerable. Because I was not just an immigrant, but am also Black and speak with a distinct Jamaican accent, I felt especially vulnerable. An American Civil Liberties Union report found that Gwinnett County law enforcement engaged in racial profiling, and that many immigrants were stopped without probable cause or reasonable suspicion. Georgia’s governor ran on a platform to “round up criminal illegals and take ’em home.” Law enforcement where I lived was known for aggressive raids and roadblocks, enthusiastically participating in programs to funnel immigrants into ICE prisons, followed by deportation. And, for most of that time, I lived in dread. During some of those years, I worked as a cook and a nurse assistant, while raising my three children who are citizens born in Georgia. Prior to my arrest by ICE, I lived in Georgia for more than 10 years as an immigrant from Jamaica. They are a consequence of a cultural through-line of racism and anti-immigrant fervor, reinforced by systemic inequities and bias. Our illegal and inhumane surgeries at Irwin … did not happen in a vacuum. believes, and how it behaves, at the intersection of immigration, race and law enforcement. To prevent these brutalities in the future requires more than ending ICE contracts like at Irwin, it requires an overhaul of what the U.S. Our illegal and inhumane surgeries at Irwin have been documented by advocates and reported in the media. We survivors are seeking restitution for the irreparable harms we have suffered and are challenging our deportations. Those human rights violations are currently under investigation by governmental agencies and the courts. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at Irwin. In 2019, I became one of about 40 women subjected to invasive non-consensual gynecological surgery while in the custody of U.S. But for all Americans who want to see human rights as the guiding principle of the country’s immigration and asylum policies, there’s still a long road ahead to overhaul a system that has failed to live up to its ideals, needlessly and carelessly destroying lives in the process. That’s a huge victory for immigrants and their allies, who advocated for its closure for over a decade. The Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia-a notorious prison known for its human rights abuses-has finally been forced to end its ICE contract. (Ben Hasty / MediaNews Group / Reading Eagle via Getty Images) Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced in May it would cut the contract for another detention center, the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Ga. A rally outside the Berks County Services Center, an immigrant detention center in Reading, Pa., on August 19, 2021.
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