Her body, no choice: What the atrocities against immigrant women mean for the US
On the first day of his presidency, Joe Biden had already begun to roll back Trump-era policies. After four years punctuated by protests, riots and deep crises, there is no doubt that the new President will have a lot to do – and to undo, especially when it comes to immigration.
The Trump administration’s policies have attracted criticism from Amnesty International for their violation of human rights and international immigration laws. The Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agency came often under fire for carrying out warrantless searches and unlawfully detaining people. In particular, ICE’s detention facilities have become infamous for their mistreatment of immigrants. Medical issues were the most documented form of abuse: according to Homeland Security, detainees had no access to soap or places to wash themselves.
In 2020, with the COVID-19 pandemic, things were bound to get worse: a report (PDF 375KB) by the organization Project South exposed jarring medical neglect at the Irwin County Detention Center (ICDC) in Georgia, where detainees were not distanced nor given masks. One whistleblower nurse, Dawn Wooten, declared that health professionals refused to test detained immigrants for COVID-19, ignored their complaints or requests for examinations, had fabricated medical records or destroyed existing ones. But the most unsettling allegations concern the medical abuses suffered in particular by the women detained.
According to the report, corroborated by follow-up investigations, at least 19 women were either pressured to undergo invasive gynaecological surgeries, or had one without their knowledge or consent. As most of them only spoke Spanish, many recounted not understanding what was happening to them. Doctors and nurses reportedly urged them to agree to the operations, growing frustrated when the detainees asked questions or refused, and often threatening them to withhold future medical care. Some detainees stated that they woke up from unrelated minor surgeries to find that the doctor had removed part of their reproductive organs.
A board of external medical professionals deemed the procedures unnecessary and “overly aggressive”, as they resulted in the impossibility for the patients to have children.
The first investigations were initiated by members of the US Congress through a letter to the Department for Homeland Security. However, judging that the US Government had failed “to take these allegations seriously”, they later appealed to the United Nations to investigate the “clear pattern of alleged human rights violations by DHS.”
More cases have surfaced in the past months, now adding up to 57 victims in the course of two years; however, investigations were hindered by the withdrawal of the detainee’s medical records and the deportations of at least six women who testified against ICDC.
This kind of abuse is sadly not new in the US. Governmental eugenic programs were widespread in the 20th century: at least 70,000 forced sterilization that mostly targeted Black and Native American women were performed since the 1930s; between the 1960s and 1970s, a federal program allowed doctors to arbitrarily sterilize 25% of Native women. In a sobering parallel with modern events, they were also lied to about their medical procedures.
Some variations of these programs still operated as late as the 2010s, especially on detainees: between 2006 and 2010, 148 state-funded tubal ligations were performed on women after they gave birth while incarcerated. Only three years ago, a judge offered inmates reduced sentences in exchange for ‘voluntary agreeing’ to using birth control implants.
These recent events are too often erased from the history of the US. It would be easy to ascribe all responsibility to Trump’s presidency, or to argue that Trump’s rhetoric aggravated pre-existing racism and intolerance towards immigrants, making it easier for such things to happen. However, the violence against minorities in general and women in particular is not new, nor attributable to a single person; on the contrary, it unearths deeply rooted prejudices that are part of the United States. The abuse on women detained at the ICDC was not responsibility of a single doctor, but of widespread silent acquiescence or active malpractice: the blame rests in the system – one that targets people that are vulnerable because of their origins, their ethnicity, their economic conditions, the language they speak, or their gender. The very same system that still decides who can “perpetuate the species” by forcing sterilizations for some and banning abortions for others.
These problems are ingrained in American society and did not vanish once Trump left the White House. His presidency cannot be seen as an ‘exception’ in US history; if anything, it should be a moment of awakening. 2020 has seen an unprecedented mobilization, both in protests and at the ballots: here’s to hoping that the people will recognize that while the blame cannot be conveniently put on an individual, power does not belong to a single person, either.
Short biography
Chiara Cigliano is a MA student in Language, Society and Communication at the University of Bologna. She graduated cum laude from the University of Naples ‘Federico II’ in European Languages, Cultures and Literature in 2019, after spending a semester abroad at the University of Manchester, UK. While her early studies allowed her to become fluent in English and French, her current focus is on communication strategies and analysis of public discourses. In particular, her BA thesis focused on the study of language attitudes, and how these can influence our perception of immigrants – with dramatic effects on the migrants’ lives and futures in Europe