New York, NY – September 29, 2019 – The Intercept has published a feature story by journalist José Olivares, in partnership with PRI’s The Takeaway, focused on the suicide of Efraín Romero de la Rosa, a Mexican immigrant with a history of mental illness diagnoses who spent four months in ICE custody –– and died on the 21st day of solitary confinement at Stewart Detention Center.
The story also provides a rare glimpse into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s detainee practices and excessive use of solitary confinement, revealing how detainees with mental illnesses are often treated in immigration detention. Backed by a successful public records request, which made available emails, investigation summaries, photos, and 18 hours of security camera footage of Romero’s last day at Stewart, Olivares’s feature shows that “CoreCivic staff at the Stewart Detention Facility may have violated their own rules when dealing with the mentally ill detainee.”
Olivares continues: “From the intake process to the disciplinary process — and even on the night he committed suicide — the CoreCivic staff neglected to properly care for the man in their custody who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia.”
An accompanying 10-minute film by The Intercept video producer Travis Mannon documents the final 18 hours of Romero’s 21st day in solitary — his last day alive — by juxtaposing security camera footage and state investigators’ audio interviews with medical staff, correctional staff, and other men held in the same solitary confinement cell block. The film provides a harrowing but necessary account of the stunning neglect and publicly funded torture that drove a 40-year-old Mexican immigrant with schizophrenia to suicide.
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