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

“This seems like a big moment in the campaign. Trump explicitly told the nation that he should be trusted over his own CDC on the vaccine. That’s headline news. It unequivocally confirms what critics — including scientists inside the administration — have warned of.”

—Tweet by Greg Sargent, Sept. 16, 2020. [Who is Greg Sargent? Just an average American citizen capable of thinking for himself, that’s all.]

“There are approximately 328.2 million people in the US. To get to the low end of herd immunity, about 60% of the population must catch Covid. That’s about 196,920,000 cases.
The current US death rate is about 2.96%. So that’s 5,836,679 deaths necessary for herd immunity.”

—Tweet by Kyle Feldscher, another average American, Sept. 16, 2020. [The Spanish Flue pandemic of 2018, one of the deadliest pandemics in human history, killed 675,000 Americans. Let that sink in, Mr. Trump.]

“We’re very close to having the vaccine. If you want to know the truth, the previous administration would have taken perhaps years to have a vaccine because of the FDA and all the approvals, and we’re within weeks of getting it. You know, could be three weeks, four weeks, but we think we have it.”

—Donald Trump, in Tuesday’s town hall Q & A. [CDC Director Robert Redfield disagrees, testifying before Congress that it could be as late as the third quarter of 2021 before a vaccine is widely available.]

“I think he made a mistake when he said that. It’s just incorrect information,” Trump told reporters. That is incorrect information. I believe if you asked him, he would probably say that he didn’t understand the question.” 

—Trump, in response to Redfield’s testimony. [That’s right, Donnie, everyone’s wrong but you. Never let science get in the way of a good political agenda.]

“The president loves mixing it up with everybody. He did the interview with Jonathan Swan, the 18 tapes of Bob Woodward — now he did this. But this is an ambush.”

—Faux News host and Trump apologist Laura Ingraham, on that town hall meeting at which ordinary citizens asked question of Trump that any thoughtful voter might ask. [Maybe Laura’s pissed because a Black woman had the audacity to ask Trump to not interrupt and let her ask her question. Horrors! How rude of her!]

No collusion indeed.

You’d think they’d be a little more careful not to make it so obvious by vetting images that accompany their political ads.

The “they” is Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again Committee and the image is that of a silhouette of three soldiers, presumably American in a political ad asking that Americans “Support our Troops.”

The problem is, the stock photo is of Russian models posing as American soldiers and the military jets shown to be purportedly “supporting our troops” are Russian MiG-29s and the soldier on the far right is carrying a Russian-made AK-47 assault rifle.

The composite photo also includes Russian sky, Greek mountains and French ground, according to photo’s creator, Arthur Zakirov, a photo hobbyist who lives in the Russian city of Perm.

The ad ran from Sept. 8 to Sept. 12.

Check out Trump’s Russian-made ad HERE.

Oops.

Let’s see if this pops up on Q-Anon’s radar (probably not because it doesn’t fit their twisted agenda).

Besides, we know this was just another stupid mistake by the Trump organization…

But was it, really?

Again, oops.

“Remember, Miami Cubans gave me the highly honored Bay of Pigs Award for all I have done for our great Cuban Population!”

—Donald Trump tweet on Sunday. [Uh, no such award exists. Why would he claim that? No one knows.]

“It’ll start getting cooler. You just — you just watch. I don’t think science knows, actually.”

—Donald Trump, on global warming. [Uh…didn’t he say the same thing about the coronavirus? Just askin’. But then, Trump, that “very stable genius,” knows more than all the scientists.]

 “I was in the White House a couple of days ago. Meeting of 10 people in the Oval Office. And a guy sneezed, innocently. Not a horrible—just a sneeze. The entire room bailed out, okay? Including me, by the way.”

—Donald Trump, during one of his interviews with Bob Woodward. [This is the same guy who wanted to “Liberate Michigan,” and who insisted, “Everything we did was right,” and who has opposed the wearing of masks and encouraged schools to return to person-to-person learning.]

“Some Conservatives, but not many elected ones, defended the president for remaining calm saying you don’t yell fire in a crowded movie theater. It’s true. But you do if the theater is actually on fire.”

— Meet the Press host Chuck Todd, rebuking conservative defenses of Trump’s decision to “downplay” the severity of the coronavirus.

“Publicly identifying with the Trump campaign scandalously associates the Christian faith itself with brazen bigotry. [I]f a racist campaign does not shake Christian support, what possible difference is that faith making?”

—Conservative columnist Michael Gerson, on Sept. 14, 2020.

There are only seven (7, VII) weeks left to pull this country back from the abyss (though some reading this post still believe – at Donald Trump’s insistence – that if Joe Biden wins, Blacks will overrun the suburbs, rioters, looters, thugs and arsonists will invade our homes and (gasp) rape our wives and daughters).

As Earl Long said of similar warnings from the White Citizens Council way back in 1959, “You never heard such claptrap in your life.”

And this, mind you, coming from a man who told Bob Woodward he wanted to play down the coronavirus because he didn’t want to throw the country into a panic.

Yet, those same Trumpettes still insist on ignoring Trump’s fear-mongering while trying to sow the seeds of dissent and distrust at the feet of Democrats – the socialists, communists and fascists out there just lying and waiting for an opportunity to take over and take down the “Murican way of life.”

Somehow, I just can’t see the face of Donald Trump superimposed onto the body of John Wayne astride a horse as he rides to the rescue of the wild west. A golf cart is Trump’s preferred mode of transportation across the rugged terrain of one of his golf courses. (the very image of Trump on a horse is itself a form of cheap comedy, but that’s another story for another day.)

The Q-Anon types, those delightful disciples of Alex Jones, the Boogaloo Boys, Patriot Prayer and the like (along with the Russian bots, of course) are going to do everything in their power to convince the easily duped into thinking that a Biden win would be the moral equivalent to Armageddon.

Trump must be getting a little desperate. I somehow got on his campaign mailing list and yesterday, I received a “very personal” email from every member of the Trump family, plus his campaign manager, each one soliciting campaign contributions and some even offering me a signed photo of Der Führer. Others offered me a chance to sign up for a possible trip to Washington to be seen with Dear Leader and maybe even be photographed with him, all contributions appreciated.

It reminded me of when I was on Bobby Jindal’s email list and kept getting those updates about how he was being swept along with a groundswell support for his Republican presidential nomination (he never made it past the 1% mark).

So, the only logical thing for us to do as we head down the stretch is to remind you there are still plenty of “Nope” T-shirts and face masks, both adorned with the trademark orange hairpiece and extra-extra-long red tie.

Shirts are $18.99 for sizes Small, Medium, Large and EL. 2XL shirts are $21.99 and 3XL are $23.99 each.

Face masks are $9 each for one or two masks, $24 for three or four masks, $36 for five, $66 for 10 and $120 for 20. Add $4.95 for shipping.

You can order by clicking on that infamous yellow in the column to the right of this post to pay by credit card or by sending a check for the correct amount to:

LouisianaVoice

P.O. Box 922

Denham Springs, LA. 70727 

You can also contribute to LouisianaVoice’s fund drive the same way (hint, hint).

Here’s what the masks (on two of our professional models) and shirts look like: MASKS AND SHIRTS