16 ms·

Whistleblower: Mass Hysterectomies at ICE Facility

172 points by seigando 6y ago

mhh__ 6y ago
Link to original report https://projectsouth.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/OIG-ICDC-Complaint-1.pdf https://projectsouth.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/OIG-ICDC... Some testimonies from said report: "Everybody he sees has a hysterectomy—just about everybody. He’s even taken out the wrong ovary on a young lady [detained immigrant woman]. She was supposed to get her left ovary removed because it had a cyst on the left ovary; he took out the right one. She was upset. She had to go back to take out the left and she wound up with a total hysterectomy. She still wanted children—so she has to go back home now and tell her husband that she can’t bear kids… she said she was not all the way out under anesthesia and heard him [doctor] tell the nurse that he took the wrong ovary." "She was locked up in lockdown cells in E4 where the treatment was absolutely terrible. She was locked up with no right to commissary, no right to communicate with her family for many days, she had no right to use the microwave to prepare her food for two days. The rest of the time she was there, she was only allowed to go out for 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the afternoon, depending on the guard who was there because there were days where she was not permitted to leave at all. During the day, she asked the guards for water and was denied many times, during her isolation in the cell she never had cleaning products to keep the space clean, the shower water was extremely hot and this prevented her from correctly completing her personal cleaning. She only received personal hygiene products once (four small bar soaps, four tubes of toothpastes, four bottles of body wash, and two toothbrushes) that were not enough for the whole period of time that she was isolated. The treatment by the guards is humiliating and since she doesn’t speak English they make fun of her. She came out after 22 days of psychological, physical, and emotional torture."
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Just fyi, that link 404s now. This link seems to contain the report: https://www.scribd.com/document/476013004/OIG-Complaint#from_embed https://www.scribd.com/document/476013004/OIG-Complaint#from...
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    Doessn't 404 for me, but here's an archive link https://web.archive.org/web/20200914205425/https://projectsouth.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/OIG-ICDC-Complaint-1.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20200914205425/https://projectso...
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      You're right, it works now, I must've made a typo.
bonchicbongenre 6y ago
Before anyone flags this for being "political": don't. This is about human rights, not politics. Don't conflate the two.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  I think the people who flag things like this tend to be doing it (ostensibly for being political) but really because it doesn't hurt their bottom line i.e. I'm alright jack. Have a contrarian reason to praise trump? Have some free upvotes
- elvis_thesinger 6y ago
  I didn't realize this was a "human rights" social club
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  Human rights are a subset of politics. (It's fashionable to label as “nonpolitical” any matter of politics that the speaker thinks is important, as if “politics” as a label only applied to trivialities, but that's not what it means and, more relevantly, not why HN often prefers to avoid things that are in that domain but not particularly intellectual novelties.)
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    Technically, politics is just "what shoud we do". Almost every discussion is political if you want to work by a strict standard.
  - bonchicbongenre 6y ago
    No. Absolutely not. Politics often impinges on human rights, yes. But human rights are not a subset of politics, and absolutely should not be couched in political terms. Issues that are rightly called political are those over which reasonable people may disagree. This highlights that "politics" doesn't only apply to trivialities --myriad real political issues come to mind. My point here is that to argue that this particular issue is political would be beyond the pale, as support of the alleged actions is not a humanly just or reasonable position: one could certainly make it into a political issue, if one were heartless enough, but such evil isn't worth discussion. This is not a political issue. Deciding that it is one would be despicable.
ianleeclark 6y ago
Back when the news broke originally about these camps disappearing thousands of children at a time, separating families, and the rampant sexual abuse, we got to have the fun conversation of, "is it really a concentration camp?" I'm terrified at what deflection will be made in this instance, but we can unfortunately expect the deflection.
- rbecker 6y ago
  Regarding the disappearing children, are you referring to https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/29/us/immigration-refugee-child-missing-hhs-obama-photo-trnd/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/29/us/immigration-refugee-ch... ?
akmarinov 6y ago
Damn, this is Uighur level bad for the US...
aaomidi 6y ago
The US has had a lot of history and practice with forced sterilizations over the centuries. This is nothing "new". It's despicable. It has nothing to do with what party it is. The Democrats and Republicans have both participated and signed off on these. This is a problem with the state in general, and with unchecked and unmonitored authority. This is why people say ACAB. It's the unchecked authority you give someone (e.g. a cop, border agent, DA, Judges, etc) that create issues like this. It's a matter of removing and reducing authority as much as possible in these systems. Until we realize that authority is the cause, we are not going to find a proper fix. Everything else is a reactionary bandaid on a systemic issue.
- canada_dry 6y ago
  > unchecked and unmonitored authority ... and I'd add: unaccountable So many disturbing examples e.g. ordering blood be taken from an unconscious person under arrest [i], administering ketamine drugs to arrested people [ii], confiscating property without a warrant [iii]... the list goes on and on. [i] https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/utah-police-nurse-1.4348819 https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/utah-police-nurse-1.4348819 [ii] https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/ketamine-injected-arrests-draws-scrutiny-72542386 https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/ketamine-injected-ar... [iii] https://buffalonews.com/news/local/cheektowaga-man-suing-sheriff-for-return-of-car-80-000-seized-in-traffic-stop/article_54973578-2996-59e4-9369-9c737a67ddba.html https://buffalonews.com/news/local/cheektowaga-man-suing-she...
- hobby-coder-guy 6y ago
  When did the democrats do this?
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    A lot of it was done by Democrats. Admittedly, largely during the late Third and early Fourth Party Systems, when the dedicated core of the Democratic Party was the ideological antecedent of the present dedicated core of the Republican Party (the names of the major parties have been the same from the Third through the present Sixth party system, but the ideological and geographical alignment of the parties has shifted radically.)
kemonocode 6y ago
Had to vouch for this because this is the kind of uncomfortable truths people would rather not hear about, yet it's important that Americans are made aware of patent and flagrant humans rights violations made in their own soil.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  I had to do so too.
- ouid 6y ago
  What do you mean by 'you had to vouch for this'?
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    They mean that it was flagged a d they used the “vouch” option available to endorse it despite the flagging.
opwieurposiu 6y ago
It appears the medicare rate for a hysterectomy is about $1-$4k. Much higher with hospital stay. Possible medical billing scam? https://www.jnjmedicaldevices.com/sites/default/files/user_uploaded_assets/pdf_assets/2020-04/2020-Hysterectomy-Reimbursement-Fact-Sheet-087502-191120.pdf https://www.jnjmedicaldevices.com/sites/default/files/user_u...
- millzlane 6y ago
  Sounds much more likely than inflating Covid-19 deaths.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  There are much better ways to do a billing scam. If someone is doing hysterectomies in a camp where people have no rights it's not to jack up medicare charges.
ouid 6y ago
Why the hell is this off the front page?
sudosysgen 6y ago
Posting this to r/news on Reddit resulted in the post being silently removed. https://snew.notabug.io/r/news/comments/isx4me/whistleblower_there_were_mass_hysterectomies_at/ https://snew.notabug.io/r/news/comments/isx4me/whistleblower... (removed by moderators). There are no duplicates on the subreddit, and the moderators have not sent any message.
RickJWagner 6y ago
“anonymous, unproven allegations, made without any fact-checkable specifics” should be treated with skepticism. I completely agree. There seems to be a spate of anonymous blockbusters lately.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Good thing this isn't an anonymous whistleblower, then. Did you read the article past the ICE denial? The whistleblower put their name on the allegations.
pontifier 6y ago
This is terrible, and I feel powerless to prevent this type of injustice. The people involved should be hung.
aaron695 6y ago
I wouldn't rule out a form of Magical Penis Theft - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koro_(medicine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koro_(medicine) Mass hysteria induced by bad conditions and language difficulties. You see a little of this in the report. The medical error making the woman infertile setting it off. The alternative is medical fraud by a doctor who knows complaints are hard given their conditions. But records will have to have been kept. What would the profit to risk be? Why not do un-needed procedures that are not so permanent.
hevelvarik 6y ago
I’m skeptical, people leave this facility and have been for years. The population is social media active and have friends and family who are in a position to speak out because we aren’t China. It’s difficult to fathom that this issue would surface precisely once by a lone whistleblower
- edwinyzh 6y ago
  Of course you are not China. You are the United States which has been systematically sterilizing indigenous populations up until the 70s.
brundolf 6y ago
Why did this get flagged? Is there something wrong with the facts?
- verdverm 6y ago
  The comment contents (and back and forth) is why, devolved conversations
  - brundolf 6y ago
    I've seen much worse conversations on posts that remain unflagged, and the news itself seems important for people to hear about.
    - verdverm 6y ago
      I'm reading the report, it's mostly about Covid, general lack of care, and possibly denial of care. The hysterectomy part (a short section of the document) has twice removed testimony of an immigrant woman there / the nurses perception of a high rate, no numbers presented. Flagging can be user induced, depends on how people feel about it and dang's choice on the matter I believe too
- edwinyzh 6y ago
  Maybe because it's about bad things happened in the United States?
bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago
Another example of the American taxpayer's largesse. They should be grateful they're receiving medical care at no expense to them. If the reports of substandard cleanliness are true, that should be addressed but resources are finite.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
nextaccountic 6y ago
dang: should this really be flagged, while human rights violations from other countries aren't?
Chris2048 6y ago
I'm going to remain skeptical until the extraordinary headlines manage to provide extraordinary evidence. https://www.dailydot.com/debug/forced-hysterectomy-story-russia/ https://www.dailydot.com/debug/forced-hysterectomy-story-rus...

172 points by seigando 6y ago

Link to original report https://projectsouth.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/OIG-ICDC-Complaint-1.pdf https://projectsouth.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/OIG-ICDC... Some testimonies from said report: "Everybody he sees has a hysterectomy—just about everybody. He’s even taken out the wrong ovary on a young lady [detained immigrant woman]. She was supposed to get her left ovary removed because it had a cyst on the left ovary; he took out the right one. She was upset. She had to go back to take out the left and she wound up with a total hysterectomy. She still wanted children—so she has to go back home now and tell her husband that she can’t bear kids… she said she was not all the way out under anesthesia and heard him [doctor] tell the nurse that he took the wrong ovary." "She was locked up in lockdown cells in E4 where the treatment was absolutely terrible. She was locked up with no right to commissary, no right to communicate with her family for many days, she had no right to use the microwave to prepare her food for two days. The rest of the time she was there, she was only allowed to go out for 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the afternoon, depending on the guard who was there because there were days where she was not permitted to leave at all. During the day, she asked the guards for water and was denied many times, during her isolation in the cell she never had cleaning products to keep the space clean, the shower water was extremely hot and this prevented her from correctly completing her personal cleaning. She only received personal hygiene products once (four small bar soaps, four tubes of toothpastes, four bottles of body wash, and two toothbrushes) that were not enough for the whole period of time that she was isolated. The treatment by the guards is humiliating and since she doesn’t speak English they make fun of her. She came out after 22 days of psychological, physical, and emotional torture."

sudosysgen 6y ago
Just fyi, that link 404s now. This link seems to contain the report: https://www.scribd.com/document/476013004/OIG-Complaint#from_embed https://www.scribd.com/document/476013004/OIG-Complaint#from...
- mhh__ 6y ago
  Doessn't 404 for me, but here's an archive link https://web.archive.org/web/20200914205425/https://projectsouth.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/OIG-ICDC-Complaint-1.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20200914205425/https://projectso...
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    You're right, it works now, I must've made a typo.

bonchicbongenre 6y ago

Before anyone flags this for being "political": don't. This is about human rights, not politics. Don't conflate the two.

mhh__ 6y ago
I think the people who flag things like this tend to be doing it (ostensibly for being political) but really because it doesn't hurt their bottom line i.e. I'm alright jack. Have a contrarian reason to praise trump? Have some free upvotes
elvis_thesinger 6y ago
I didn't realize this was a "human rights" social club
dragonwriter 6y ago
Human rights are a subset of politics. (It's fashionable to label as “nonpolitical” any matter of politics that the speaker thinks is important, as if “politics” as a label only applied to trivialities, but that's not what it means and, more relevantly, not why HN often prefers to avoid things that are in that domain but not particularly intellectual novelties.)
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Technically, politics is just "what shoud we do". Almost every discussion is political if you want to work by a strict standard.
- bonchicbongenre 6y ago
  No. Absolutely not. Politics often impinges on human rights, yes. But human rights are not a subset of politics, and absolutely should not be couched in political terms. Issues that are rightly called political are those over which reasonable people may disagree. This highlights that "politics" doesn't only apply to trivialities --myriad real political issues come to mind. My point here is that to argue that this particular issue is political would be beyond the pale, as support of the alleged actions is not a humanly just or reasonable position: one could certainly make it into a political issue, if one were heartless enough, but such evil isn't worth discussion. This is not a political issue. Deciding that it is one would be despicable.

ianleeclark 6y ago

Back when the news broke originally about these camps disappearing thousands of children at a time, separating families, and the rampant sexual abuse, we got to have the fun conversation of, "is it really a concentration camp?" I'm terrified at what deflection will be made in this instance, but we can unfortunately expect the deflection.

rbecker 6y ago
Regarding the disappearing children, are you referring to https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/29/us/immigration-refugee-child-missing-hhs-obama-photo-trnd/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/29/us/immigration-refugee-ch... ?

akmarinov 6y ago

Damn, this is Uighur level bad for the US...

aaomidi 6y ago

The US has had a lot of history and practice with forced sterilizations over the centuries. This is nothing "new". It's despicable. It has nothing to do with what party it is. The Democrats and Republicans have both participated and signed off on these. This is a problem with the state in general, and with unchecked and unmonitored authority. This is why people say ACAB. It's the unchecked authority you give someone (e.g. a cop, border agent, DA, Judges, etc) that create issues like this. It's a matter of removing and reducing authority as much as possible in these systems. Until we realize that authority is the cause, we are not going to find a proper fix. Everything else is a reactionary bandaid on a systemic issue.

canada_dry 6y ago
> unchecked and unmonitored authority ... and I'd add: unaccountable So many disturbing examples e.g. ordering blood be taken from an unconscious person under arrest [i], administering ketamine drugs to arrested people [ii], confiscating property without a warrant [iii]... the list goes on and on. [i] https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/utah-police-nurse-1.4348819 https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/utah-police-nurse-1.4348819 [ii] https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/ketamine-injected-arrests-draws-scrutiny-72542386 https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/ketamine-injected-ar... [iii] https://buffalonews.com/news/local/cheektowaga-man-suing-sheriff-for-return-of-car-80-000-seized-in-traffic-stop/article_54973578-2996-59e4-9369-9c737a67ddba.html https://buffalonews.com/news/local/cheektowaga-man-suing-she...
hobby-coder-guy 6y ago
When did the democrats do this?
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  A lot of it was done by Democrats. Admittedly, largely during the late Third and early Fourth Party Systems, when the dedicated core of the Democratic Party was the ideological antecedent of the present dedicated core of the Republican Party (the names of the major parties have been the same from the Third through the present Sixth party system, but the ideological and geographical alignment of the parties has shifted radically.)

kemonocode 6y ago

Had to vouch for this because this is the kind of uncomfortable truths people would rather not hear about, yet it's important that Americans are made aware of patent and flagrant humans rights violations made in their own soil.

sudosysgen 6y ago
I had to do so too.
ouid 6y ago
What do you mean by 'you had to vouch for this'?
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  They mean that it was flagged a d they used the “vouch” option available to endorse it despite the flagging.

opwieurposiu 6y ago

It appears the medicare rate for a hysterectomy is about $1-$4k. Much higher with hospital stay. Possible medical billing scam? https://www.jnjmedicaldevices.com/sites/default/files/user_uploaded_assets/pdf_assets/2020-04/2020-Hysterectomy-Reimbursement-Fact-Sheet-087502-191120.pdf https://www.jnjmedicaldevices.com/sites/default/files/user_u...

millzlane 6y ago
Sounds much more likely than inflating Covid-19 deaths.
sudosysgen 6y ago
There are much better ways to do a billing scam. If someone is doing hysterectomies in a camp where people have no rights it's not to jack up medicare charges.

ouid 6y ago

Why the hell is this off the front page?

sudosysgen 6y ago

Posting this to r/news on Reddit resulted in the post being silently removed. https://snew.notabug.io/r/news/comments/isx4me/whistleblower_there_were_mass_hysterectomies_at/ https://snew.notabug.io/r/news/comments/isx4me/whistleblower... (removed by moderators). There are no duplicates on the subreddit, and the moderators have not sent any message.

RickJWagner 6y ago

“anonymous, unproven allegations, made without any fact-checkable specifics” should be treated with skepticism. I completely agree. There seems to be a spate of anonymous blockbusters lately.

sudosysgen 6y ago
Good thing this isn't an anonymous whistleblower, then. Did you read the article past the ICE denial? The whistleblower put their name on the allegations.

pontifier 6y ago

This is terrible, and I feel powerless to prevent this type of injustice. The people involved should be hung.

aaron695 6y ago

I wouldn't rule out a form of Magical Penis Theft - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koro_(medicine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koro_(medicine) Mass hysteria induced by bad conditions and language difficulties. You see a little of this in the report. The medical error making the woman infertile setting it off. The alternative is medical fraud by a doctor who knows complaints are hard given their conditions. But records will have to have been kept. What would the profit to risk be? Why not do un-needed procedures that are not so permanent.

hevelvarik 6y ago

I’m skeptical, people leave this facility and have been for years. The population is social media active and have friends and family who are in a position to speak out because we aren’t China. It’s difficult to fathom that this issue would surface precisely once by a lone whistleblower

edwinyzh 6y ago
Of course you are not China. You are the United States which has been systematically sterilizing indigenous populations up until the 70s.

brundolf 6y ago

Why did this get flagged? Is there something wrong with the facts?

verdverm 6y ago
The comment contents (and back and forth) is why, devolved conversations
- brundolf 6y ago
  I've seen much worse conversations on posts that remain unflagged, and the news itself seems important for people to hear about.
  - verdverm 6y ago
    I'm reading the report, it's mostly about Covid, general lack of care, and possibly denial of care. The hysterectomy part (a short section of the document) has twice removed testimony of an immigrant woman there / the nurses perception of a high rate, no numbers presented. Flagging can be user induced, depends on how people feel about it and dang's choice on the matter I believe too
edwinyzh 6y ago
Maybe because it's about bad things happened in the United States?

bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago

Another example of the American taxpayer's largesse. They should be grateful they're receiving medical care at no expense to them. If the reports of substandard cleanliness are true, that should be addressed but resources are finite.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

nextaccountic 6y ago

dang: should this really be flagged, while human rights violations from other countries aren't?

Chris2048 6y ago

I'm going to remain skeptical until the extraordinary headlines manage to provide extraordinary evidence. https://www.dailydot.com/debug/forced-hysterectomy-story-russia/ https://www.dailydot.com/debug/forced-hysterectomy-story-rus...