We don’t say this lightly, John — this is an emergency.
Today, on the first day of Latinx Heritage Month, we heard news that an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Georgia has been giving an alarming number of forced hysterectomies to detained immigrants.
We must call this what it is: an act of genocide. We’re disturbed, but not surprised. For centuries, Black and Brown women have been targeted by forced sterilization. It’s long been a vile tool of white supremacists and now we’re seeing Trump’s administration use it as their latest tool to promote their racist, anti-immigrant agenda.
The Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights (GLAHR) educates, organizes and trains the Latino community in Georgia to defend and promote their civil and human rights.
These heinous crimes against humanity may sound like the nightmarish actions we read in fiction — but this is not the first time white supremacists have used forced sterilizations to enforce their racist agenda.
When the United States assumed governance of Puerto Rico in 1898, population control became a top priority. But instead of providing Puerto Rican women with access to alternative forms of safe and legal contraception — the government implemented coercive, misleading measures to push women toward having an hysterectomy. Later on it was found that nearly one-third of all Puerto Rican mothers of the ages 20-49 were sterilized as a result of this disturbing campaign.1
It is no coincidence that we’re seeing this practice emerge again under Trump’s administration. For the past three years, he’s only intensified his efforts to oppress and control the bodies of Brown and Black women.
We’re sick to our stomachs knowing that women who fled their home countries to seek refuge in our country are now being locked away in prisons where they are subjected to unspeakable, irreversible human rights violations by the United States government.
Together,
Rachel Carmona
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