Two Guatemalans detained at the Eloy Detention Center in Arizona took their own lives late last month, underscoring the inhumane conditions inside privately-owned detention facilities.
Elsa Guadalupe-Gonzalez, 24, and Jorge Garcia-Mejia, 40, died within two days of each other, reports SFGate.
Guadalupe-Gonzalez was found by another detainee hanging in her cell on April 28. Similarly, Garcia-Mejia hung himself on April 30. Both inmates had been at Eloy for 40 days before they died.
Frequency of Immigrant Deaths Alarming
According to La Prensa Libre, a widely-circulated newspaper in Guatemala, Guatemala’s Minister of Foreign Relations Rita Claverie calls the two inmate deaths alarming and is asking for an “exhaustive investigation” by the government into the circumstances surrounding the deaths.The Eloy Detention Center is privately owned and operated by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), a company that runs 60 facilities across the nation. According to the Arizona Daily Star, there have been three deaths at Eloy since December.
Six deaths at American immigrant detention centers within the past year is alarming enough, but that half of these have taken place at Eloy is even more disturbing.
A Shameful Record of Inadequate Care for Detainees
Prior to the suicides, the last inmate death at Eloy was due to a medical issue, when a detainee died because his hyperglycemia was not properly treated at the facility. According to officials, the detainee had not informed them that he was diabetic.But this was not the first time that an Eloy inmate had died due to a lack of health care.
According to the New York Times, the American Civil Liberties Union obtained internal documents from the 2007 death of Felix Franklin Rodriguez-Torres, who died of testicular cancer that was not diagnosed during his two months at Eloy. Officials say they had not detected any cancer symptoms.
Reading about the suicides made me question: What could have driven these individuals to take their own lives? Where they offered adequate mental health support? What must they have had to endure that led them to such a tragic conclusion?
Hearing of so many accounts of abuse and medical neglect that have been occurring at these detention centers, it is not hard to imagine the conditions these centers must have imposed on detainees that would lead them to commit suicide.
Stop the Lack of Accountability in Private Prisons
What is most troubling is that because these are privately-owned detention centers, they do not have any consistent government supervision.Allowing these private detention centers to continue opens up the possibility of more cases of abuse and unnecessary deaths. But if our elected officials aren’t going to hold private prison companies accountable, that means we need to make it a priority for them.
