Latino USA

On May 13, 2015, José de Jesús Deniz Sahagun celebrated his 31st birthday with family and friends at his home in Jalisco, Mexico—steps away from the Pacific Ocean. They were celebrating, but also saying goodbye. The following day, José traveled to a town on the Mexican border where he would attempt to cross into the United States and later reunite with his three young children in Las Vegas.

But things did not go as planned.

Seven days after his birthday, José died inside the Eloy Immigrant Detention Center in Arizona. His death was ruled a suicide, after the medical examiner found a thick orange prison sock lodged in his throat.

In the last 13 years, 160 immigrants have died in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal agency that detains and deports people who are in the country without legal status, according to the agency’s own records.

The strange way in which José died, after spending just three days in detention, drew the attention of immigrant rights advocates. Of the at least seven suicides of ICE detainees since 2005, five happened at Eloy, prompting questions from advocates about the detention center’s readiness to provide mental health services to the immigrants detained there. And according to a recently released report from ICE, the detention center failed to meet several agency standards in the events leading up to José’s death.

José entered U.S. custody after he ran up to a Border Patrol checkpoint at the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona, saying he feared for his life and needed help. Earlier that evening, he had called his sister Rosario in Las Vegas and told her that something had gone wrong with the smuggler his family hired to bring him across the border, and he took off running.

Once in custody, Border Patrol agents placed José in a holding cell. Agents reported that he was hysterical and that he had tried to hurt himself so badly that they had to take him to a hospital in Tucson, Arizona, according to an internal investigation into José’s death.

After being released from the hospital, José was taken to Eloy, about two hours north in the middle of the Arizona desert, and booked into the Eloy Detention Center, which holds up to 1,600 immigrants on any given day. During intake, there was no documentation of José’s suicide attempt and hospital visit.

Eloy, like many ICE detention centers, is owned and operated by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), one of the nation’s largest private prison companies. In the immigrant community, Eloy has a reputation as one of the worst places to be detained, with “constant complaints about medical care, mental health care,” said Victoria Lopez, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union. It was common, she said, to be  “placed in segregation without knowing why or when you’d get out.”

Although ICE facilities look like prisons, the people detained there are held for civil immigration violations, not criminal proceedings. While there are detainees with criminal records, many —like José— have no criminal background and are waiting to be deported or to fight their case in immigration court.

Once inside the Eloy Detention Center, José was able to call his sister, Rosario. She said her brother sounded glad to be in the U.S., but anxious to get out of detention. That was the only time they spoke on the phone. [MORE]