- Project Summary: In no more than 200 words, provide a brief description of your project, including the puzzle you intend to address, the key questions your project attempts to answer, and a brief discussion of how you intend on answering those questions.
Abstract:
My research project examines how the U.S immigrant detention centers for women have led to high rates of sexual and medical abuse at the hands of ICE agents, medical professionals, and private corporations. More than a thousand immigrant women in detention centers in previous years have filed sexual assault allegations, which has sparked national discourse and received attention by the U.S. Congress. I will provide a historical analysis of forced sterilization on marginalized women’s bodies in relation to the modern-day experiences of women under ICE custody. I will also provide analysis on how the Trump Administration played a role in limiting the access to noncoercive reproductive health care. Under the Trump administration, I will explore the high rate of sexual assault allegations reported within these detention centers and the precarious conditions in which women are forced to live in, if they speak out. I then plan on examining how private prison corporations are profiting from this vast immigration detention center system and how immigrant women are entrapped within these power systems. Questions that I will then raise in this research project include: how do security guards operate as state actors? How does privatization of U.S. immigrant detention centers further limit the agency of women? What are the means in which medical professions like gynecologists are allowed to perform forced sterilization on women? I intend on answering these research questions by writing a paper and gathering data through journal articles and specific case reports.