Mexico’s Foreign Ministry said it has identified two Mexican migrant women who may have had surgery performed on them without their consent while detained at a US immigration centre in the state of Georgia.
While being held at the Irwin centre in Georgia, one Mexican woman was reportedly subject to gynaecological surgery without her approval and without receiving post-operative care, the ministry said in a weekend statement.
The ministry said its findings were based on actions taken by consular staff and interviews Mexican officials conducted at the centre.
Officials were also verifying the case of a second woman who may have been subject to surgical intervention “without her full consent,” without receiving an explanation in Spanish of the procedure, or her medical diagnosis, it added.
It did not name the women. The ministry last month said it had identified a woman possibly subjected to surgery in the centre, but did not specify whether she had given her consent.
The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency did not respond to a request for comment.
The ministry also said it is in touch with a lawyer about a possible class action lawsuit by Mexican women who have been detained at the facility.
In September, a complaint by a whistleblower nurse alleged medical abuse within the Georgia detention centre, including unauthorised hysterectomies - a surgery to remove the uterus.
The nurse, Dawn Wooten, said several inmates had told her they had hysterectomies and they don't know why.
Ms Wooten also said about one doctor that "everybody he sees has a hysterectomy - just about everybody," and that he removed the wrong ovary from one detainee.
When those allegations surfaced, a lawyer who had spent a decade working in asylum and immigration law in the US told SBS News she was not surprised to hear them and they should be considered within the current lens of "a very clear move by the Trump administration to crack down on certain types of immigration".
An Australian historian and senior lecturer at Flinders University also told SBS News the allegations were part of a long history of forced sterilisation and reproductive injustice in the US.
In its statement, the Mexican foreign ministry said the first woman it referred to was not subject to a hysterectomy. It gave no further details on the second.
ICE Health Service Corps said last month that since 2018 only two people at the centre were referred for hysterectomies, based on approved recommendations by specialists.
The contractor that runs the facility has said it strongly refutes the allegations and any implications of misconduct.
Additional reporting by SBS News.
