Coffee Regional Medical Center Mahendra Amin pictured on the Coffee Regional Medical Center website.
Dr. Mahendra Amin has been identified as the doctor referred to in the Irwin County Detention Center complaint filed against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Georgia on September 14 by nurse Dawn Wooten. Amin, 68, is accused of performing at least five unnecessary hysterectomies between October and December 2019. An obstetrics and gynecology specialist, Amin’s name did not appear in the original complaint but was quickly uncovered by Prism.
In Wooten’s allegations of “Lack of Medical Care, Unsafe Work Practices, and Absense of Adequate Protection Against COVID-19 for Detained Immigrants and Employees Alike” at the Irwin County facility, which acts as a jail for ICE, the licensed practical nurse said women have received unnecessary hysterectomies. In one section of the complaint, Wooten called Amin by the nickname “The Uterus Collector.” Wooten said women were regularly sent to Amin. She compared the practices of the prison officials to those of an “experimental concentration camp.”
In one instance, Wooten alleged that when Amin was supposed to remove a woman’s ovary to treat a cyst, he removed the wrong ovary. The woman was forced to return to see Amin, who removed the correct ovary, sterilizing the patient. Wooten said in the complaint, “She still wanted children — so she has to go back home now and tell her husband that she can’t bear kids.”
Amin Paid $520,000 in Fines Over False Medicare & Medicaid Claims in 2015, Feds Say
In April 2015, Amin and other doctors were ordered by the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Georgia to pay more than $520,000 in fines after “allegations that they caused false claims to be submitted to Medicare and Medicaid.” The U.S. Attorney’s office press release said that the case involved the “amount of compensation paid by the Hospital Authority of Irwin County to Dr. Amin.” The press release credits the case as being brought to the attention of authorities by whistleblowers. According to the release, the whistleblowers received a portion of the settlement.
Amin told The Intercept on September 15 that the detention center must approve any medical procedures he deems necessary after examining detainees. He told the outlet he’s done “one or two hysterectomies in the past two [or] three years” but did not specify whether those procedures were conducted on ICE prisoners.
Amin Received His Medical Qualifications in India
Facebook/Mahendra AmimA meme that was posted on Dr. Mahendra Amin’s Facebook page.
According to Amin’s profile on the website for the Coffee Regional Medical Center in Georgia — a profile that has been removed from the website since the original publication of this article — he was educated at the Medical School Government Medical College of South Gujarat University in Surat, India. Amin completed his internship at the New Civil Hospital in Surat, India. His residency was the University Hospital at the University of Medicine and Dentistry in Newark, New Jersey. Amin is a member of the American Medical Association, the Georgia Medical Association and the American Society of Laparoscopic Surgeons. Amin’s social security number was issued in 1988.
Elizabeth Matherne, a former lawyer with the Southern Poverty Law Center who has represented women who have seen Amin, told NBC News, “Two to three years ago, I had a face-to-face conversation with (someone in management). I was so disturbed. I begged her to get my client treatment with a different doctor. I told her I had heard from multiple people that he was rough, that they were scared to go to him, that they didn’t understand what he was doing.”
READ NEXT: Teenage Porn Star Controversy Rocks California High School