The national immigrant detention facility in Tacoma has witnessed at least six, perhaps seven, suicide attempts over a period of less than three months this year, according to sound and 911 call records.
The University of Washington Center for Human Rights made the audio and video recordings of lots of enquiries it made through public records requests on Tuesday, covering the dates Jan. 1 through March 18. Six calls were made about folks who were being held in the Northwest ICE Processing Center trying to hang themselves or commit suicide.
A hospital nurse claimed in one call that the 28-year-old woman who attempted suicide on March 24 had made a suicide try only a few days prior, suggesting that a sixth attempt had not been recorded in the records the UW center received.
Team members at the detention facility called in two suicide attempts on March 11 and 13. A worker who received one of the calls on March 11 reported that a 20-year-old Indian guy who had attempted to drop himself was now coughing and crying.
Another contact may or may not have concerned a death try: A man jumped or fell from a building’s top tier.
Scientists, activists, and members of Congress are trying to comprehend why 61-year-old Charles Leo Daniel died March 7 at the hospital, which housed immigrants in deportation proceedings and is managed by the Florida-based GEO Group, as a result of information about the rash of suicide attempts. Neither U. S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement or the , Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office , has given a cause of death.
Daniel spent almost the entire four years in solitary confinement at the detention facility, and nine more years in solitary confinement before that while serving day in state prison for second-degree death.
Activists and Democrat officials, including Washington Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell and U. S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, have criticized ICE in the midst of Daniel’s dying for what they characterize as the company’s misuse of single.
Numerous studies have demonstrated that extended isolation leads to and worsens mental health issues.
In response to the high death rates at its Tacoma center, ICE declined to comment.
The 911 revelations are especially concerning because they appear to represent an upsurge, according to Phil Neff, a analysis coordinator at the UW center.
If there has been a recent increase in death attempt, it’s unclear why.
The center originally obtained information for the emergency dispatch that spanned August 2017 to April 2023. In those five and a half years, dispatchers classified 12 calls as suicide attempts ( though there may have been more attempts because they can also be classified as medical incidents ). Six was the highest during that time span, according to Neff, in 2018. That many people were present in a third of the time this year.
Suicide is a pressing concern in various penitentiary and confinement services. The , city Seattle jail , had four death deaths in a new 12- quarter period, an exceptionally high rate compared to jails global.
In recent years, one death death has been reported at the ICE’s Tacoma incarceration facility. In 2018, Russian asylum- seeker , Mergensana Amar , was taken off life aid after attempting to stand himself.
However, the number of suicide deaths just paints a partial picture, failing to account for the number of attempts to stop lives.
Maru Mora Villalpando, an administrator with the team La Resistencia, which opposes detention of illegal immigrants, said the 911 records released to the UW center” shows the level of desperation is much higher than we can always think, or that we were informed of”.
People detained at the detention centre and their supporters have long complained about what they’ve long claimed are terrible situations, including poor food and medical care. According to ICE and GEO, they follow strict requirements.
ICE’s , detention requirements, revised in 2016, responsibility at least eight hours of suicide prevention training for all people accountable for people held in custody. Instruction should explain why “detention facilities are conducive to suicidal behavior” and how to recognize signs that someone may be putting themselves on the verge of committing suicide. Additionally, the guidelines call for the referral of a mental health professional right away for someone who is in danger of doing so.
Mora Villalpando speculated that the potential increase might be because the facility now houses more asylum seekers from the northern and southern borders than it has in the past. These migrants arrived in the United States looking for safety, and their subsequent imprisonment caused despair, she said, already traumatized by the events that led to their immigration.
A study conducted by Harvard University and other institutions in 2021 found a significant increase in suicides of those held in ICE detention over the decade that ended in 2020. Much of that happened in the decade’s final year, likely driven in part by stresses from the COVID- 19 pandemic.
The researchers also made note of a 2020 Congressional investigation that “uncovered major issues in mental health care inside detention centers, including delayed psychiatric appointments, placement of patients with mental health disease in solitary confinement, and falsified observation logs for suicidal patients.”
” Such gaps may result from chronic staffing shortages”, the researchers added, citing an issue , also plaguing , the federal detention center in SeaTac, which holds people charged with crimes.
Increased mental health staffing and ending the use of solitary confinement are two recommendations made by the Harvard researchers and their colleagues.
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