Group of 35 immigrant women sue ICE over ‘abuse by a Georgia doctor accused of performing hysterectomies without consent’

A group of 35 immigrant women have sued US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) claiming they were abused by a Georgia doctor who gave them botched gynecological care, including hysterectomies without their consent. 

A class-action lawsuit was filed Monday in the US District Court for the Middle District of Georgia claiming Dr. Mahendra Amin operated on women without their consent and performed unnecessary medical procedures that have potentially endangered their ability to have children at the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia.

The suit, which contains sworn testimony from at least 35 alleged victims, also claims several of the women faced retaliation for speaking out, including being deported, being placed in solitary confinement or being physically assaulted.

The spotlight was first shone on the alleged abuse in the detention center back in September when a nurse at the facility blew the whistle on Amin’s treatment of the women.

Dozens of women then came forward saying Amin abused and mistreated them at the detention center and criminal investigations were launched by the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general. 

The 160-page suit reveals ‘a relentless pattern of unnecessary and non-consensual medical procedures, including unwanted gynecological surgeries and other non-consensual medical interventions,’ according to a statement released with the complaint.

It includes testimony from one woman, known only as Jane Doe #35, who said she had reported Amin’s actions to both a warden at the facility and an ICE official as far back as 2018, according to the Washington Post. 

The alleged victim says, even after raising numerous complaints, she was taken to the doctor for more treatment. 

Another alleged victim, Jaromy Floriano Navarro, told the Post she was deported to Mexico the day after the whistleblower’s complaint first surfaced after having lived in the US for two decades.  

‘The takeaway I want is justice. For them to bring us back – those of us who were deported for speaking up – and for this to never happen again, in any immigration facility,’ she said.

She said she hoped the Biden administration would overturn her deportation. 

Other than Amin, a number of other employees at ICE and LaSalle Corrections, which runs the facility, are named in the complaint. 

The women in the suit include those still being held at the facility, some who have since been released into the US, and some who have been deported to counties including Nigeria, Canada and Mexico.   

Project South, one of the groups working on behalf of the alleged victims, told the Post the testimonies from the women show ICE officials turned a blind eye to the abuse.   

‘ICE knew about medical abuse and did not do anything,’ said Azadeh Shahshahani, the legal and advocacy director at Project South. 

‘In the context of them now trying to retaliate against people that are speaking up and trying to erase the evidence, it’s really quite egregious.’ 

DailyMail.com has reached out to ICE, LaSalle Corrections and Amin’s attorney Scott R. Grubman for comment. 

Grubman has previously denied any wrongdoing by his client and described Amin as a ‘highly respected physician who has dedicated his adult life to treating a high-risk, underserved population in rural Georgia’. 

The suit comes one month after the US government agreed to temporarily halt the deportations of women allegedly abused by Amin until mid-January. 

This came after several women said they faced retaliation for coming forward and suits were filed to stop four potential witnesses being deported.

One woman said ICE lifted a hold on her deportation just hours after she spoke to investigators. 

Another woman said she was taken to an airport to be placed on a deportation flight before her lawyers could intervene. 

Elora Mukherjee, a Columbia University law professor working with several of the women, accused ICE of trying to destroy evidence by removing the women. 

The allegations against the doctor first surfaced when Dawn Wooten, a nurse at the Irwin facility, filed a whistleblower complaint alleging many women detained at the center were taken to an unnamed gynecologist who performed unwanted hysterectomies on them.

Wooten branded the doctor the ‘uterus collector’ because of how many hysterectomies he performed. 

The doctor accused was later identified as Amin and several women have come forward to accuse him of performing operations on them either without their consent or when they didn’t fully understand them as part of ongoing investigations. 

In October, an independent team of medical experts looked into medical records of 19 alleged victims and sent a report to Congress saying that women under the doctor’s care were administered birth control and underwent procedures without their consent. 

ICE has previously said that it is cooperating with the ongoing federal investigation and branded allegations of retaliation against potential victims as ‘completely false’.

Amin is no longer treating women at the detention center.