Dawn Wooten, a Black female nurse working at the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, becomes a whistleblower by raising alarm about the forced hysterectomies, lack of COVID-19 protocols, inadequate medical care, and unsafe work practices that detained immigrants face at the detention center.

A Southern coalition of organizers including Project South, Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights (GLAHR), Georgia Detention Watch, and the South Georgia Immigrant Network and Detention Watch Network have been campaigning for years against the inhumane conditions of detention centers in the South. They join forces with Ms. Wooten.

The coalition starts a campaign, and writes a petition calling for action to end the violence. They document, "recent accounts of jarring medical neglect at ICDC [Irwin County Detention Center] including refusal to test detained immigrants for COVID-19 who have been exposed to the virus and are symptomatic, shredding of medical requests submitted by detained immigrants, and fabricating medical records" (Project South, 2020).

The ICE detention center at Irwin County is closed, and all the detainees are forcibly removed to other locations.

Dawn Wooten continues to be targeted for her actions.