Earthjustice is deeply troubled by the allegations that immigrant women have been facing unconscionable state violence in an ICE Detention Center in Georgia, including reports of forced sterilization.

If true, the claims compound a pattern of harm and animus toward immigrant communities by the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security, including the forced separation of children from their families and the placement of immigrant children in unhealthy, unsanitary detention centers.

We must recognize that this nation has a brutal, shameful and racist history of forced sterilizations that disproportionately targeted people of color. These allegations follow myriad ongoing human rights abuses including the use of toxic disinfectants at the Adelanto Immigrant Detention Facility in California — disinfectants that have been linked through animal studies to infertility, birth defects, DNA damage, and cell death.

We join calls for a thorough investigation of the alleged abuse of immigrant women by Congress and the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security.