Hi, I'm Dan Pramak and welcome to Axios Recap, presented by Bridge Bank.

Today is Tuesday, September 22nd.

Tesla stock is down, median home prices are up, and we're focused on the business of immigrant detention.

Last week, a nurse named Don Wooten blew the whistle on what she claims is systemic, medical neglect and malpractice at an immigrant detention facility in Georgia where she used to work.

Part of her claims, contained in a complaint to to ICE are about COVID-19,

that the jail failed to prepare properly, not doing things like separating detainees or providing

them with PPE, and also that the jail slow-walked testing in order to artificially depress

its number of positive cases.

But most explosively, outside of the coronavirus, Wooten also claimed that some detainees

had been given forced hysterectomies.

Now, at this moment, we do not know if the nurse's claims are true.

The physician allegedly involved in the hysterectomies, for example, denies the allegations. What we do know, though, is that around 70% of all immigrant jails,

including the one where Wooten worked, are run by private companies, and that oversight of them can be lax.

Moreover, the profit incentives can be perverse.

The company for which Wooten worked, LaSalle Corrections,

reportedly gets around $60 per inmate per day, but then you've got to subtract overhead costs

like food and in-house medical care. The more medical services or products provided by the

jail, the less money it ends up making.

We want to go deeper with Jonathan Blitzer, a New Yorker staff writer who's covered the

immigrant detention business for years.

That conversation in 15 seconds.

We're joined now by Jonathan Blitzer, a staff writer at The New Yorker.

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