WASHINGTON--Government Accountability Project's Senior Counsel Dana Gold provided a written statement for the record to the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs in support of its hearing today on the Medical Mistreatment of Women in ICE Detention.

Government Accountability Project’s client, Nurse Dawn Wooten, made protected whistleblower disclosures to the Department of Homeland Security and Congress in September 2020 regarding failures at the Irwin County Detention Center (ICDC) in southern Georgia to protect against the spread of COVID and, more horrifically, that immigrant women in detention were being subjected to nonconsensual and invasive gynecological procedures.

Ms. Wooten’s disclosures, joined by the accounts of immigrant women in detention who experienced medical mistreatment, were vital to exposing the abuses that prompted this Subcommittee’s investigation and Tuesday’s hearing.

In addition to this hearing, viral media coverage of Ms. Wooten and her shocking disclosures catalyzed profound and necessary accountability by prompting additional Congressional and agency investigations, inquiries from entities of the United Nations, a class action lawsuit seeking justice for the women survivors' mistreatment, and ultimately, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas's decision in May 2021 to order ICE to end its immigration contract with ICDC.

Stressing the crucial role of whistleblowers in...

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