The Trump administration is planning to detain immigrants at a Georgia jail that became known for allegations that women detained there were subjected to non-consensual gynecological procedures, multiple sources told The Intercept.
An Immigrations and Customs Enforcement spokesperson confirmed to The Intercept that the agency will be using the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, but the official could not say whether detentions there had already begun. Attorneys and advocates familiar with ICE’s operations in the state said the agency had started to temporarily detain people at the facility on Friday, citing communication with ICE officials in Georgia.
Irwin drew nationwide attention in the fall of 2020, when a number of detained women and a nurse-turned-whistleblower accused the facility of medical misconduct. After months of backlash, the Biden administration stopped detaining immigrant women there in 2021, and the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations embarked on an 18-month investigation. Their 2022 report found that “female detainees appear to have been subjected to excessive, invasive, and often unnecessary gynecological procedures” and that there appeared to be “repeated failures” to secure informed consent for medical procedures for immigrant women detained at Irwin.
The allegations also set off court battles, brought both by detained women at Irwin and a doctor who worked at the facility. Fourteen women sued ICE and Irwin officials over the allegations in 2021, and at least 40 women testified to medical misconduct, including non-consensual gynecological procedures. After all the plaintiffs were released in 2021, a federal judge dismissed many of their claims in 2024 on procedural grounds. Early this year, the lawsuit was settled with no admission of liability.
A Georgia judge found last year that statements accusing a doctor at Irwin of performing “mass hysterectomies” were false in a defamation case against a news organization. The Senate report found the claims of mass hysterectomies could not be substantiated, but did underscore that other gynecological procedures on immigrant women appeared to have been conducted without proper consent.
The use of the facility set off alarms for immigration advocates and a former Department of Homeland Security civil rights official, who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
“It’s inhumane. It’s so bad,” said the official, who previously investigated the conditions at Irwin. Using the facility to detain immigrants again, they added, “would be an absolute mistake.”
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An immigration attorney and a person familiar with the developments told The Intercept that both women and men under ICE custody would be detained at the facility on a temporary basis for only 72 hours. The ICE spokesperson said the agency could not yet confirm those details.
ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, did not provide a statement by time of publication.
The Trump administration’s use of Irwin comes as the White House pressures ICE and its partner agencies to speed up arrests to support President Donald Trump’s “mass deportation” agenda. The increase in ICE-related arrests has overwhelmed the detention system.
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The administration has, in recent months, expanded and signed new contracts with private prison operators to detain more immigrants caught in its dragnet. The Washington Post reported in September that ICE was looking to use Irwin again, along with other troubled facilities.
“This administration does not care about civil rights and they certainly don’t care about the conditions of these facilities,” said the former DHS official, who was among dozens of staff members removed from their positions this year by the Trump administration. “I think they’re just trying to round up as many people as they can and get rid of them without any due process and without any regard for conditions.”
Advocates and attorneys in the region are also deeply concerned.
“This shocking development is very much in line with this administration’s modus operandi of going to extreme lengths to dehumanize and brutalize migrants,” said Azadeh Shahshahani, the legal and advocacy director at Project South, a civil rights group that played a major role in drawing attention to the conditions in ICE detention at Irwin. “We stand with migrant women who were subjected to medical abuse and other egregious human rights violations at Irwin.”
The facility, which is run by the private prison contractor LaSalle Corrections, has historically held local detainees, U.S. Marshals Service federal detainees, and people under ICE custody. After the Biden administration stopped detaining immigrants at Irwin in 2021, Irwin County and the USMS continued to detain people in their custody, according to a facility audit from earlier this year.
The Irwin County sheriff, the USMS, and LaSalle Corrections did not respond to requests for comment by time of publication. An Irwin facility employee, when reached by phone, referred all questions to ICE’s Atlanta office.
LaSalle Corrections, the prison contractor running Irwin, posted a number of jobs available at Irwin on Thursday.
The DHS Office of Inspector General, the agency’s watchdog, found in 2022 after its own investigation that medical care at Irwin, separate from gynecological procedures, was “inadequate.” Its findings regarding the allegations of nonconsensual gynecological procedures were not published, since they were taken on by another office within the OIG. DHS OIG did not respond to a request for comment by time of publication.
After the Biden administration stopped detaining immigrant women at Irwin in 2021, ICE began detaining and transferring women to the Stewart Detention Center, another troubled Georgia facility. An Intercept investigation in 2022 found that women detained at Stewart alleged sexual assault by a nurse contractor working there.
“The survivors of [ICE detention at Irwin] still bear the scars, and given the DHS’s termination of nearly every oversight mechanism available to monitor and ameliorate violations of their own standards, it will be difficult for those affected to prevent or correct harms in yet another remote detention center,” said Sarah Owings, an Atlanta-based immigration attorney who represented immigrants detained at Irwin before they were transferred out in 2021. “Given Irwin’s history, I do not think it is a good idea to rekindle this contract.”
The post ICE Will Hold Immigrants in Jail Accused of “Excessive, Invasive” Gynecological Procedures appeared first on The Intercept.
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it wasn’t merely “unwanted gynecological procedures,” and given the actual crimes committed in that facility, this article represents an unacceptably euphemized version of events. ctrl+f forced sterilization.
In 2020, forced sterilizations at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Ocilla, Georgia amassed national attention. [163] Over 50 people detained at the ICE facility, all lower-income immigrant women with minimal understanding of the English language, stated they were pushed to undergo or did undergo medically unnecessary gynecological surgeries including hysterectomies. A Senate briefing on this subject emphasized the “uniform absence of truly informed consent” due in part to language barriers and in part to lack of information provided. [164]
america has a long history of eugenics, of which this is just one of the more recent examples we know about.