Staffing reduced at airport in days before suicide
Long-term understaffing at cells where Jimenez died
The Genesis Security employee in charge of the contract with the Canada Border Services Agency admitted to reducing staffing at the airport immigration holding cells to save money, but said he did so at the request of the CBSA.
Earlier in the week, a former Genesis employee testified at a coroner’s inquest that he was unable to perform physical room checks the morning Lucia Vega Jimenez took her own life because there must be at least two staff members present in order to do so safely. Jivan Sandhu said he signed off on four room checks between 5 a.m. and 6:30 a.m. on Dec. 20 that never happened because he was on his own. He found Jimenez hanging in the shower at 6:50.
Under the terms of the CBSA contract, there must be a supervisor and three Genesis guards present in the holding centre at all times and at least one of the guards must be female.
Genesis Security manager Michael Henke, who is in charge of the CBSA contract, told the inquest he was aware of a long history of understaffing at the cells and knew the female guard was regularly dispatched to do pickups at the Alouette Correctional Centre for Women.
Henke, who is the direct superior of the holding centre guards but spends most of his time at the CBSA facility downtown, said he was not aware that room check records were routinely falsified.
Asked by lawyer Phil Rankin if he knew his guards wouldn’t go in the cells if there weren’t enough staff and he set the staffing levels, it was reasonable to conclude the room checks weren’t being done, Henke responded, “I think that’s correct.”
Staffing levels at the airport holding centre first began to deviate from the contract in 2012, Henke said, but it was at the request of former CBSA detention manager Colby Brose, who asked him to cut back on staffing to save money.
CBSA lawyer Graham Stark took issue with that claim. Brose, who is not scheduled to testify at the inquest, only approved a reduction of one staff member on the weekends, when there are far fewer detainee transfers, Stark said.
“You weren’t able to staff. Is that the issue?” Stark asked. “Yes,” Henke said. Stark went through the contract with Henke, asking him to confirm the minimum required staffing levels and that the contract says nothing about Genesis employees assigned to the holding centre being authorized to leave to do detainee pickups. “Correct,” Henke said after a pause. Henke said Genesis faced staffing challenges because security clearances for employees regularly take nine months to a year and most prospective hires are unwilling to wait that long.
Stark responded that Genesis has held the contract since 2010 and should have factored that into its hiring process.
Asked by inquest counsel Rodrick MacKenzie what Genesis has done to improve oversight since the Jimenez suicide, Henke responded that he asks supervisors to send their daily reports to his personal, as well as work email, so he is able to review them right away. He said he spends “not a lot” of time at the airport holding cells and spends “limited” time supervising the guards there.
He and his superiors have more frequent contact with CBSA, he said, noting that there is now a CBSA administrative office at the holding centre Monday to Friday.
Genesis recently sent its current guards for a one-day mental health awareness program, but that was a one-time event for existing, not new, employees, Henke said.
Genesis provided security for the CBSA’s airport and downtown holding cells under a $6.2-million contract that expired earlier this year. The contract now continues on a month-tomonth basis.
Earlier in the day, the inquest heard testimony that Jimenez was quiet and seemed “extremely nervous” the night before she took her own life.
The women, all Spanish-speaking, tried to engage Jimenez in conversation the evening of Dec. 19, but she was very quiet, said RCMP Const. Cynthia Karelis, who interviewed the three women in the holding centre with Jimenez.
“It was very apparent that the victim was extremely nervous. She was scratching her head, shaking and unable to sit still,” one of the women said in her interview with Karelis.
Karelis, who interviewed the women at the Alouette Correctional Centre on Dec. 22, testified that the women, all immigration detainees, did not seem to grasp what was happening to them.
“They felt very isolated and didn’t understand what was going on.”
All three received counselling at Alouette, said assistant deputy warden Sandra Gemmill.
The inquest also heard clarification of what caused Jimenez to miss what could have been a crucial appointment with a mental health coordinator at Alouette Dec. 16. Jimenez was, in effect, bumped because the coordinator was seeing patients whose files had been marked urgent, Gemmill said. The appointment was cancelled when Jimenez left the facility on Dec. 19.
Since then, at Gemmill’s recommendation, all mental health referrals from immigration detainees are marked urgent by default because of the likelihood they are under stress as a result of their situation and could be deported within days.
The purpose of a coroner’s inquest is not to assign blame or find fault, but rather establish the facts surrounding a death and make recommendations as to how to prevent similar deaths in the future.