The Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia—a notorious prison known for its human rights abuses—has finally been forced to end its ICE contract. But for justice to be served, the government, ICE and those culpable must be held accountable.
What happened to me at Irwin is not a one-off aberration—it’s a legacy of American white-supremacist pseudo-science going back decades.
The Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia—a notorious prison known for its human rights abuses—has finally been forced to. That’s a huge victory for immigrants and their allies, who advocated for its closure for over a decade.
Our illegal and inhumane surgeries at Irwin … did not happen in a vacuum. They are a consequence of a cultural through-line of racism and anti-immigrant fervor, reinforced by systemic inequities and bias. Once, when I was pregnant, I was stopped and searched because they were looking for undocumented Jamaicans in the area. When I refused to reveal information about other immigrants, I was told I would be locked up for a long time and would be forced to have her baby inside a prison.
But the worst was yet to come. A doctor told me that I had cysts in my stomach that needed to be treated, but there had not been any follow-up. Then, weeks later, I was woken up early one morning and told I would be going to see a doctor. I assumed it was about my high blood pressure, but when we arrived at the hospital, I was told I was getting surgery to remove the cysts.