Louisiana Voice

A 27-page WHISTLEBLOWER COMPLAINT filed by a nurse who formerly worked at the Irwin County Detention Center (ICDC), a Georgia Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility has placed a Ruston private prison company directly in the crosshairs of the House Homeland Security Committee chaired by Mississippi Democrat Bennie Thompson.

The complaint, filed by licensed practical nurse Dawn Wooten and signed by several immigrant advocacy groups, claims “an alarming pattern of unsafe conditions” in dealing with the coronavirus and “a lack of oversight at privately-run ICE facilities,” Thompson said.

Wooten raises red flags on what she called a “high rate of hysterectomies” performed without patients’ consent. “When I met all these women who had had surgeries, I thought this was like an experimental concentration camp. It was like they’re experimenting with our bodies,” she said.

“Everybody he sees has a hysterectomy—just about everybody,” she said without naming the doctor. “He’s even taken out the wrong ovary on a young lady [detained immigrant woman]. She was supposed to get her left ovary removed because it had a cyst on the left ovary; he took out the right one. She was upset. She had to go back to take out the left and she wound up with a total hysterectomy. She still wanted children—so she has to go back home now and tell her husband that she can’t bear kids… she said she was not all the way out under anesthesia and heard him [doctor] tell the nurse that he took the wrong ovary.”

Wooten also said that detained women expressed to her that they didn’t fully understand why they had to get a hysterectomy. “I’ve had several inmates tell me that they’ve been to see the doctor and they’ve had hysterectomies and they don’t know why they went or why they’re going.

“We’ve questioned among ourselves like goodness he’s taking everybody’s stuff out,” she said. “That’s his specialty, he’s the uterus collector. I know that’s ugly…is he collecting these things or something…Everybody he sees, he’s taking all their uteruses out or he’s taken their tubes out. What in the world?”

Wooten is represented by the Government Accountability Project which provides representation for whistleblowers, and Project South, a social justice organization. Signing off on the complaint were Georgia Detention Watch, Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights and South Georgia Immigrant Support Network.

Unwanted hysterectomies weren’t the only complaint cited. Detainees had their own grievances.

“This place is not equipped for humans,” said one detained immigrant at Irwin. Another immigrant stated: “This is the dirtiest facility I have ever been in: everything is dirty; one shower for more than fifty people; one bathroom for all of us; I don’t even know how to give more details because it is all nasty, really nasty; only God is taking care of us here.” Another immigrant told Project South: “It’s been hell. It’s dirty, its nasty, and there is mold.” She went onto say: “The food is so bad that people can’t keep it down.” She explained that the food is often spoiled and often times cockroaches and ants from the unit come into the food. Another immigrant stated: “The meals are disgusting. There are ants in the food.”

Nor was the 1200-bed facility in Ocilla, GA., the only LaSalle-run facility cited in the report.

Richwood Correctional Center, south of Monroe, in Ouachita Parish, also operated by LaSalle Corrections, was reported to be using similar tactics including requiring employees who may be COVID-19 positive to work, concealing who has tested positive for COVID-19, mixing COVID-19 exposed individuals with those who are not, and more.

The complaint called for “a prompt and thorough investigation into these practices at … all other LaSalle operated facilities as these complaints suggest a more systemic problem.”

LaSalle operates or has operated nine detention centers in Louisiana – four of those in Tallulah in Madison Parish – capable of housing up to 6,717 inmates. Altogether the company has run up to 25 PRIVATE PRISONS in Louisiana, Texas (15 centers) and Georgia (one) with at least 16,812 beds, according to LaSalle’s Web page. Three of the facilities failed to provide a bed count.

The Louisiana prisons currently or once run by LaSalle and their bed counts include:

• Catahoula Correctional Center in Harrisonburg (835 beds);
• Jackson Parish Correctional Center in Jonesboro (1252);
• LaSalle Correctional Center in Olla (755);
• Madison Parish Correctional Center in Tallulah (334);
• Madison Parish Detention Center in Tallulah (264);
• Madison Parish LTCW (formerly the Louisiana Transitional Center for Women) in Tallulah (535);
• River Correctional Center in Ferriday (602);
• Southern Correctional Center in Tallulah (564);
• Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield (1576).

If nothing else, LaSalle and sheriffs it has agreements with (Jackson Parish is one of those) can do the math. The state pays sheriffs $24.39 per day per state prisoner housed in local jails. Ice pays an average of $65 per day in Louisiana (the rate in Jackson Parish is $74 per day; nationally, the average rate is $126 per day).

That made it a no-brainer for sheriffs and LaSalle. Starting pay for jail employees at Winn Correctional went from $10 yo $18 per hour – the pay rate was only $9 per hour as recently as 2014 – and in Jackson Parish, the starting pay was bumped to $17.31 per hour after nearly 7,000 immigration detainees were brought to LOUISIANA, now the second largest jailer of immigration detainees, ranking only behind Texas.

But even with money flowing in, the absence of generators left the Jackson Parish facility woefully unprepared for Hurricane Laura which KNOCKED OUT POWER in Jonesboro and left the detention center without water, ice or electricity for several days.

Perhaps the most revealing thing about working at LaSalle were the NEGATIVE REVIEWS posted online by current and former employees. Comments range from “Bad management,” “Worst place ever,” “Unprofessional,” “an absolute joke,” “Not worth it,” and “Horrible,” to mention just a few.

Overall, 99 of 164 employee reviews rated LaSalle at 1.0 or 2.0 on a scale of 1 to 5 as a favorable place to work, with 1.0 being the worst rating and 5.0 the best. Only 44 gave LaSalle a 4.0 or 5.0. The company was rated on five areas of operations: work/life balance, compensation/benefits, job security/advancement, management and culture.

The highest average rating among the five area was 2.6 for compensation/benefits and the lowest was 2.1 for management.

APPROPRIATELY NAMED ENTRANCE TO LASALLE

LASALLE HEADQUARTERS IN RUSTON