To Better Hold ICE Accountable, Congress Must Pass HR 2415

In September, Georgia nurse Dawn Wooten filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General alleging that the Irwin County U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility had conducted hysterectomies on immigrant women being detained in the United States without their informed consent.

ICE is currently structured, in many ways, to mirror the prison system. ICE frequently makes contracts with detention facilities to hold immigrants, even though there are alternative programs that could effectively house asylum seekers in less oppressive conditions. As Michelle Brané, senior director of the migrant rights and justice program at the Women’s Refugee Commission, noted, “Immigration detention is not criminal detention. … Legally, it is civil or administrative detention. The people being held in these facilities are not serving out some sentences.”