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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Next up, an exclusive investigation from WNYC's The Takeaway as well as The Intercept. It was a partnership with The Takeaway and The Intercept on the suicide death of a migrant detainee under custody of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. If the justice system is turning itself inside out over the suicide of Jeffrey Epstein, doesn't it have an obligation to treat other prison suicides equally as systemic failures?

No one has been accountable for the death of the 40 year-old ICE detainee and diagnosed schizophrenic, a person whose name is Efraín Romero de la Rosa. The undocumented Mexican immigrant killed himself while in solitary confinement last summer. The investigation shows that rules for dealing with migrants with mental health issues were skirted as Efraín's mental health deteriorated.

With me now are The Takeaway associate producer José Olivares who's been looking into Efraín's death and Travis Mannon video producer for The Intercept. Welcome to the show, both of you, good morning.

Travis Mannon: Thank you so much, Brian.

José Olivares: Good morning. Thanks, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: José, for people who haven't heard this yet, you want to start at the beginning. How did this investigation begin?

José Olivares: Sure. Last year, when Efraín Romero de la Rosa took his own life within ICE custody, ICE released a very short, very brief press release with very little information as to what actually were the details surrounding Efraín's death. After searching and investigating and finding out it turns out that Efraín was severely schizophrenic, he had a severe mental illness and he was placed in solitary confinement for prolonged periods of time and he killed himself. He hanged himself after 21 days in solitary confinement.

Now, this news came out last year but in the course of one year since last summer, we ended up accessing 18 hours of security camera footage, we ended up accessing hours of investigation audio with witnesses who witnessed the death, other detainees who were held in the same solitary block. We also accessed audio with correctional staff who were involved with Efraín during his time in ICE custody, and also hundreds of pages of records and photos of the investigation.

Now, what we found was a stunning neglect by the correctional staff at the Stewart Detention facility. Now, a little bit about the Stewart Detention facility. This is one of the largest ICE facilities in the entire country. It's almost in the middle of nowhere in Georgia, it's in a very rural part of Georgia so it's very difficult for attorneys and advocates to access and help their clients who are fighting immigration proceedings. It's also experienced four deaths in 14 months which is a really, really high number including two by suicide, with Efraín's death.

Brian Lehrer: That's such a disturbing number in concentration. I want to play for our listeners some audio from your pieces that will help illuminate some of this. Here is Andrew Free, an attorney with the family on what should happen when a detainee has a diagnosed mental illness.

Andrew Free: A federal immigration officer who happened to work for the county saw Efraín's mental health history and made a note that this person does not claim good mental health. This person is a person who has previously been identified as schizophrenic and will need immediate intervention upon his arrival at Stewart.

The fact that the ICE officer identified and said out loud to the agency this person has schizophrenia should have triggered a process by which there's an evaluation, there's a determination as to the appropriateness of continued custody, there's a determination as to the appropriate location where this person's freedom is going to be deprived, whether it's Stewart or whether it's going to be the mental health hospital he was ultimately referred to, and there should be a determination as to whether this person is actually competent to proceed in immigration proceedings.

Brian Lehrer: There from a lawyer for the family of the late Efraín Romero de la Rosa, the attorney Andrew Free. A list of best practices there, Travis, Travis Mannon video producer for The Intercept. You put together a short film of all the footage related to the case. What did happen in the case of Efraín if you're familiar enough with it as compared to the best practices that his attorney just laid out for newly detained migrant, or a newly detained anybody, is seen to have signs of mental illness.

Travis Mannon: I think José touched on it, which is that there's just a stunning pattern of neglect that we saw here from the intake process through the disciplinary process that put them in solitary confinement up until the night of his death. When one of the detention officers was falsifying the logs during rounds, saying that he was looking in the cell to see if he was okay and he was just signing it and walking right past. It was just a very stunning pattern of neglect.

Brian Lehrer: Do you want to expand on that José?

José: Sure. It's interesting to note that Efraín was in Stewart two times. He was in the Stewart Detention Facility twice. The first time he went in there, he spent 15 days in solitary confinement. This was after ICE staff recognized that he was schizophrenia, that he had a mental illness. They put him in solitary confinement for 15 days. After that first stint in solitary confinement, he was actually placed on suicide watch at the same facility. Then his mental health continued to deteriorate, and they got so bad that ICE actually sent him to a mental hospital for over a month.

Now, on his return from the mental hospital back to Stewart, correctional officers neglected to recognize and classify him as a "special vulnerability detainee" which for ICE means that they require all these special accommodations if you're a special vulnerability detainee. If you have schizophrenia qualifies as such. They neglected to recognize him, and a few days later they put him in solitary confinement for the second time.

Now, for the second time when they put them in solitary, they actually sent them there for 30 days, which is twice what the United Nations has deemed to be torture for people in solitary confinement.

Brian Lehrer: Your phone is breaking up a little bit. We'll try to get that fixed, but in the meantime, I'll play another clip from the piece. Here is psychologist Terry Kupers on the use of solitary confinement for detainees with mental illness.

Terry Kupers: People who are prone to mental illness, or already have a mental illness, their mental illness is exacerbated, psychotic if their schizophrenia, schizoaffective. They're very likely to have a breakdown in solitary confinement. If they're bipolar, they're very likely to have a severe mood swing, manic and depressive. If they're depressed, they're very likely to get more depressed and perhaps commit suicide

Brian Lehrer: Psychologist Terry Kupers. Travis, from The Intercept, I'm sitting here thinking why isn't solitary confinement prohibited for detainees or any prisoners with mental health issues?

Travis Mannon: That is a really good question, and that's one of the main points I want to get across in my film. My film it's 10 minutes, but it's really a time lapse of the final 18 hours of his last day in solitary, his 21st day in solitary. One thing I wanted to convey was the banality of evil that we see here. I start the film with the line from the UN Special Repertoire on Torture. Who has found that solitary confinement beyond 15 days, it does constitute torture and has called for a complete ban on its use for any duration on people with mental disabilities.

One thing I want to get across here, is that torture doesn't always have to look like what we saw in Abu Ghraib. Naked humans unleashes crawling around on the floor, or hooked up to electrodes, standing in stress positions. Sometimes it happens on American soil. It's just quietly keeping people in isolated conditions with little to no meaningful social interaction for up to 23 hours a day.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take some phone calls on this if anybody has anything relevant. I wonder if there are any mental health professionals listening right now, who've dealt with anybody who's been incarcerated for any reason, and what you think best practices are or should be with respect to suicide prevention in particular? Because that's the bottom line here. This detainee did take his own life, even though he had been on suicide watch. Even though he had been clearly diagnosed with and treated for severe mental health issues and yet was put in solitary confinement.

Maybe some mental health professionals listening right now might want to call in on this and tell us about your experiences in this field or anybody who's been in this position as an incarcerated person, 212-433-WNYC or anyone else with a question for our guests, 212-433-9692. As we're talking about an investigation from WNYC's The Takeaway, and The Intercept on the suicide death of a migrant detainee under custody of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE with The Takeaway associate producer José Olivares and Travis Mannon, video producer for The Intercept, whose 10-minute video as he was just describing, can be seen. Can be seen where, by the way, Travis, for people who want to have the video experience?

Travis Mannon: You can find that on the intercept.com, or any of our social media channels, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube as well.

Brian Lehrer: Let me play another clip. This is a fellow detainee describing a friend in solitary confinement.

Ranjana Natarajan: When you place someone who has mental health needs, and who perhaps has not been taking their medication has auditory hallucinations, has a history of self-harm, what you're doing is radically increasing the risk of suicide, especially if you put them in a jail cell that also has protrusions that they can use to readily hang themselves.

Brian Lehrer: I apologize. That was another expert. Now we're going to hear from that fellow detainee, Jorge.

Jorge: We saw him sad all the time. We saw him just walking around every night. He don't talk with nobody. We saw him pushing the door sometimes. These people they don't pay attention. They don't care.

Brian Lehrer: José, what's the news here because this is, as we've said, an exclusive from The Takeaway and The Intercept in your partnership. It was known that Efraín had taken his own life last summer. I believe it was known that he had mental health issues and had been in solitary confinement. What's your scoop here?

José: The interesting thing that we found through this investigation was exactly the pattern of neglect, not just on the night that he committed suicide, not just with the fact that correctional staff knew he was schizophrenic or that he was mentally ill but just everything in the process leading up to his death was, I think, something really interesting that we found. Particularly what stood out to me the most was that correctional staff sent him to solitary confinement for 30 days, that was his punishment, 30 days. He didn't survive up to 21 days.

For someone who has a mental illness, 30 days is just such a high numbers, such a long amount of time for a person to be in solitary confinement, to be deprived for 23 hours a day of any sort of human interaction. I think that was one of the documents that stood out to me the most, was finding out that they had sentenced him to 30 days in solitary confinement which is an astounding amount of time.

Brian Lehrer: Travis, how would you elaborate on that, with respect to what you want people to take away from this since it's getting some attention out there in the world, as a major important revelation from The Takeaway and The Intercept.

Travis Mannon: What the film does show a very personal portrait of this one man's final day. What I want to do is also point to the broader pattern that this is in this country, the project on government oversight through the Freedom of Information Act requested a bunch of federal documents, 6,500 federal documents showing detainees in solitary confinement. This covers the last year the Obama administration up through May 2018 of the Trump administration.

We found that 40% of the records show detainees placed in solitary confinement have mental illness. 40% of the population in solitary confinement have mental illness and more than 60% of the records show that they were held not just the mentally ill people but all the people in solitary confinement 60% are held for more than 15 days.

Brian Lehrer: Now sometimes solitary confinement is to protect other inmates from an inmate who's been displaying violence or threatening other inmates with violence. José, do you know if that was the case in Efraín's case?

José: The reason that Efraín was placed in solitary confinement is because he approached a young correctional officer and he made some very inappropriate comments and then acted as if he was going to touch her. Now, on the disciplinary sheet, it says that he was punished for I think that exact thing which was making sexual proposals. It's one of the violations that can send somebody to solitary confinement. That was the reason why they sent him to solitary confinement.

In all the other audio that we accessed from other detainees or from other correctional staff, they mentioned that he was very calm, he was nice. In fact, correctional staff when they would walk by his cell, they would see him giving people thumbs up, they would see him jumping on top of the toilets, jumping down, but other detainees who were held in the same solitary units, they described how depressed he was. He would pace around his cell, would push on the door, would start crying for his family, and requesting that he'd be deported already back to Mexico.

It's not that he was necessarily violent or that his schizophrenic episodes were particularly violent in any way but because he did as the correctional staff said make sexual proposals for this correctional officer that's why he was placed in solitary confinement.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call from Colleen, calling from San Luis Obispo, California. Colleen, hello from New York. You're on WNYC.

Colleen: Hi Brian, thank you for taking my call, originally from Brooklyn, so I'm happy to talk to you.

Brian Lehrer: Great.

Colleen: I spent 22 years working in maximum security forensic psychiatric hospital. The issue of detaining people, even people who aren't even charged yet. Those are your jail questions. Then the whole issue of the immigration crisis on the border, taking all the right and wrong questions away from that, how do you detain a whole bunch of people who are upset and maybe mentally ill or going to become severely depressed. Putting them in solitary confinement is punishment. It's inhumane and actually makes them worse.

There are other ways to do this but you have to be willing to bring in people that have experience with how to control aggressive behavior without anyone being hurt, without excessive use of restraint and seclusion. Unless it's absolutely for safety, not for staff convenience. There's plenty of evidence to show the horrendous suicide rates, the poor treatment in corrections. Everyone who has ever been inside a correctional facility either as an employee or an inmate knows these are horrendous places. You hear even some talking about how bad Epstein's experience was-- yuk, yuk, ha ha, like he deserves it.

Epstein aside people in that place haven't even been charged and haven't been convicted. They're awaiting trial so they should not be treated like they're inhuman mongrel, vermin whatever terms you want to use. It's inhumane. The fact that children are exposed to this, we're not only going to be paying for the children's long-term mental health needs, but the staff people that are working there, seeing the human trauma, ripping children from families, they will never get over that. That's all I have to say.

Brian Lehrer: Colleen, with your decades of experience in this field, what would you say to our listeners who may not be familiar what some of the alternative threat or violence reduction techniques are.

Colleen: Human contact, relationship building. If the entire staff are viewing, it's the dynamics of keepers and kept. If the people who are being kept are viewed by the keepers, as subhuman, as less than as having broken the laws so, therefore, they deserve to be treated like caged animals, then you have a major problem.

The staff culture has got to be one of benevolence, to do no harm and to support the strengths of every person and to advocate for them to get their needs met both on a daily basis and for long-term release and attorney access. What have you. If you've got teenage girls walking around with blood on their clothing because they're being refused sanitary napkins, you don't even really want to know how bad things are there. That is unheard of.

Get the Red Cross in there, get Amnesty International, get the UN, this is wrong. You had a doctor on earlier saying well, "Gee, we think this probably isn't a good idea." This is unacceptable and all the research shows you need human contact, kindness, even with hardened criminals, there are these limitations, no employees getting involved emotionally with the clients, but also not being completely detached is inhumane. They have to be polite, and respectful. They're there to protect and serve.

Brian Lehrer: Colleen, thank you so much for your call.

Colleen: Thank you for taking my call, Brian, and I love your show.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. We really appreciate your call. José Olivares from The Takeaway, is there a sense that all the focus on the suicide of Jeffrey Epstein might have a side benefit of having all kinds of jails and prisons and detention facilities take suicide prevention more seriously? You were documenting not just this one individual's death, but the fact that there's a record of more than one at this particular facility. Do you think there's an opportunity here?

José: Speaking as a journalist, even though I am a journalist, I certainly hope so. We have to take into consideration that Jeffrey Epstein and Efraín Romero de la Rosa were two drastically different people. Jeffrey Epstein is a multi-multi-millionaire wielding so much power with so many friends with so many people in power and Efraín was a vulnerable man, he was undocumented, he was mentally ill. He had spent time already locked away in prison in Virginia and arrested and spent time in jail in North Carolina. It's interesting.

Will we see conditions change? Well, maybe but for who, right? For the powerful who happen to be arrested or for migrants who are vulnerable and who are placed in these detention facilities. Something interesting that I do want to bring up that Colleen's call made me maybe think about was that the first suicide that happened at the Stewart Detention Facility happened in spring of 2017. Now the man who committed suicide, his name was Jean Carlos Jimenez-Joséph. He was a 27 year-old young man DACA recipients who committed some crimes so he was set to be deported.

However he spent 19 days in solitary confinement and took his own life. He hang themselves with the sprinkler head in the cell after 19 days in solitary confinement. Jean also suffered from schizophrenia. He was also severely mentally ill but he requested multiple times to get more medication, to up his dosage and staff just refused or neglected to take those worries into consideration.

What we saw after 19 days in solitary for Jean was a very tragic death. With that investigation government documents revealed that the Stewart Detention Facility was severely understaffed when it came to medical staffing and correctional staff were also falsifying logs and also displaying a pattern of neglect when it came to dealing with Jean Carlos Jimenez-Joséph. Only 14 months later, now we have Efraín's case who killed himself in almost identical circumstances.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take one more call. Catherine in Bedford. You're on WNYC. Hi, Catherine.

Catherine: Hi there. I'm calling to let you know that a lot of people don't realize that schizophrenia is a condition that is not cured. My brother suffer from schizophrenia for many years. I do mental health advocacy for the treatment advocacy center and a couple of other organizations. I heard one of the speakers say that this gentleman was sent to a treatment facility for a month and then returned. You don't get better from schizophrenia. It's a disease.

Think of it as a the younger cousin of Alzheimer's. There's nothing you can do about it. They suffer from psychosis. They can be violent. My brother could be very violent at times. You need to treat them with compassion as another one of your callers said, with compassion, they can't help it and give them the right medications and treatment not imprisonment and punishment.

Brian Lehrer: If they've committed crimes, Catherine?

Catherine: The crimes are not of their doing. They need to be again treated somewhere. Maybe it takes a forensic psychiatric facility not some sort of outpatient treatment, Brian. It was generally speaking not their fault. I can't speak for all of them but most of the violence that they commit, like with my brother. He threatened me with a big butcher knife a couple of times and mashed up my husband or tried to a few times but you get them back on their medication, put them in a less stressful situation. Then hope that maybe a cure will be discovered someday.

Brian Lehrer: Catherine, can I ask what if you have a perspective given your personal experience and your work as a mental health advocate with respect to the debate that's going on now around guns and mental health. Some Republicans seem to be using deal with mental health as an excuse to get away from dealing with guns but some mental health advocates also don't like the idea of these red flag laws because it takes away the civil liberties of people who might have mental illness and stigmatize them. When that wouldn't be necessary in an ideal world. What's your take on that?

Catherine: Well, the first comment is that there are people with schizophrenia in England and France and Italy and Brazil and we don't have mass shootings in those countries because they don't have access to guns. They're just as mentally ill, they're just as prone to psychosis and paranoia. If you're just dealing with people who like my brother are severely schizophrenia and treatment resistant, they don't even have the wherewithal to figure out how to plan this gun attack.

My brother would never have been sold a gun. People say, "I'm not selling a gun to that guy." I don't think we have to worry about stigma and red flag laws so much as most of the shootings and most of the deaths due to guns in our country are not perpetrated by people with a serious psychiatric disorder. Just people who are angry and involved like the guy who was fired from his job. He's angry. [crosstalk] He's not schizophrenic. He's not seriously bipolar with paranoia and psychosis possibly.

Brian Lehrer: Catherine, thank you so much for your call. Travis from The Intercept, we'll give you the last word on this. Do you have any early indications from your report, which just dropped what was it, Thursday of last week, that at this detention facility, anything's going to change as a result of this being revealed?

Travis Mannon: Actually, honestly, I think José would probably be better at answering that question.

Brian Lehrer: José, go ahead on that.

José Olivares: Sure. It's interesting. It's the people who were directly involved have really, I mean, Rodney Dent, who is a correctional guard, refused to look into the cell. Who neglected to look into the cell during the periods required by law. He was fired from the facility. That's about the only change we've seen. The warden from the facility, he retired, he resigned, he's not with the company anymore.

CoreCivic really couldn't give us any comments.

However, despite two detainees killing themselves at the same facility, and then two other detainees dying of illness from-- who were detained at this facility, ICE has granted CoreCivic, which is the private company that runs the facility. ICE granted CoreCivic last November, healthcare, the entire healthcare contract for that facility, which I thought was mind-blowing.

You see this pattern of neglect by CoreCivic officers and you grant the same company the healthcare contracts. Now they have dominion over the entire facility. It's very, very unclear whether ICE will review these contracts or take any of this into consideration.

Brian Lehrer: José Olivares from The Takeaway, and Travis Mannon, from The Intercept. Listeners, you can hear more and see more including the 10-minute video that Travis produced on either The Takeaway site or The Intercept site. Thank you so much for joining us and for doing this reporting. Brian Lehrer on WNYC, stay with us.

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