Forced Sterilization of Immigrant Women in US Detention Center

Abstract This article addresses the reports of immigrant Latin American women being forcibly sterilized in the Irwin County ICE detention center through an intersectional approach and by using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) on data retrieved from news articles from the past six years and sources on the history of the practice of forced sterilization. How are these women vulnerable to this kind of abuse? The results indicate that immigrant Latin American women are in fact vulnerable to forced sterilization because of their position within the intersecting inequalities of gender, race and status, but that it is exacerbated by the negative discourses by the political elites and media (re)produce about them. Keywords: intersectionality, CDA, forced sterilization, USA