Discussing the Forced Sterilization of Detained Immigrants
Tuesday, November 10 from 7 – 8pm EST
Register at https://bit.ly/HIP_Panel
Project South, alongside various partner organizations, recently submitted an OIG complaint alleging serious medical misconduct, such as medical neglect, lack of COVID-19 testing and reporting, the shredding of medical request forms, fabrication of medical records, and forced sterilizations, against detained people within Irwin Detention Center. While the mistreatment of detained people is not new, these current practices reveal even more unsettling ways the state forcibly regulates people’s bodies, namely people of color and trans/gender non-conforming individuals in detention.
Please join HIP and a panel of speakers in discussing the recent actions and its implications on future ICE behavior. The panel will feature Azadeh Shahshahani from Project South, Dr. Altaf Saadi from Physicians for Human Rights, Lynly Egyes from the Transgender Law Center, and will be moderated by our Program’s Sameer Ahmed.
This event is co-sponsored by the Alliance for Reproductive Justice, Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, HLS Health Law Society, Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program, and the Crimmigration Clinic.
About the speakers:
Azadeh Shahshahani is the Legal & Advocacy Director at Project South and has worked for a number of years in the U.S. South to protect and defend immigrants and Muslim, Middle Eastern, and South Asian communities. She previously served as president of the National Lawyers Guild and as National Security/Immigrants’ Rights Project Director with the ACLU of Georgia. She is the author or editor of several human rights reports, including a 2017 report titled “Imprisoned Justice: Inside Two Georgia Immigrant Detention Centers,” as well as law review articles and book chapters focused on racial profiling, immigrants’ rights, and surveillance of Muslim-Americans. Her writings have appeared in the Guardian, the Nation, MSNBC, USA Today, Aljazeera, and HuffPost, among others. Azadeh is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Shanara M. Gilbert Human Rights Award from the Society of American Law Teachers, the US Human Rights Network Human Rights Movement Builder Award, the American Immigration Lawyers Association Advocacy Award, and has been recognized as an Abolitionist by the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University & the Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives.
Altaf Saadi, MD, MSc is a general academic neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and instructor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. She is also associate director of the MGH Asylum Clinic. Her research is focused on health disparities and social and structural determinants of health among racial/ethnic minorities, immigrants, and refugees. One of her projects focused on understanding how hospitals and health care facilities can ensure that all patients feel safe when accessing health care, regardless of their immigration status, exploring the concept of “sanctuary” and “safe spaces” in the clinical setting. As an asylum evaluator for the PHR Asylum Network, Dr. Saadi has conducted evaluations for individuals in the community and in immigration detention centers. She has also assessed the medical conditions of confinement in immigration detention at facilities in California and Texas, including with Human Rights First and Disability Rights California. Her academic work has been published in the British Medical Journal, JAMA, JAMA Network Open, and Neurology, among other publications, and her personal writing in Boston NPR’s CommonHealth Blog, the Huffington Post, the Los Angeles Times, STAT News, and Undark Magazine. Her work has also received media coverage in the Christian Science Monitor, Reuters, and Salon.
Lynly S. Egyes is the Legal Director at Transgender Law Center. Prior to joining TLC, Lynly was the Legal Director at the Sex Workers Project (SWP) at the Urban Justice Center. During her eight years at SWP, Lynly provided legal services to sex workers and survivors of trafficking. Lynly launched SWP’s LGBT anti-trafficking program and created SWP’s Rapid Court Response Program in response to the police profiling of Translatina women in Queens. In 2014, Lynly began volunteering in Family Detention Centers representing sex workers, trafficking victims and LGBTQ community members. Lynly is a trained facilitator with over 15 years of experience facilitating trainings throughout the United States and Mexico. She authored chapters in Broadening the Scope of Human Trafficking and Social Work Practice and co-authored the report Immigration on ICE: A Report on Immigration Home Raids Operations.