Guard nearly had to deal with suicide on his own
Questions raised about staffing levels and training at airport holding facility
Genesis Security guards David Li and Ronald Tabalujan were about to leave the immigration holding centre at the Vancouver airport to transfer a detainee when there was a knock at the window separating the guards from the guarded. The women inside were trying to get their attention because one of them had been in the bathroom an abnormally long time.
While Li guarded the door, his coworker Jivan Sandhu checked the bathroom and discovered Lucia Vega Jimenez hanging from the shower rod.
“Oh my god, she’s unconscious,” Li recalled Sandhu saying.
Tabalujan took over guarding the door while Li called 911. He then passed the phone to Tabalujan and went to assist Sandhu, bringing scissors that he used to cut the cloth suspending Jimenez and then cut the cloth around her neck.
Had the women waited just a few more minutes to knock on the window, Sandhu would have been left to deal with the situation on his own, a coroners inquest into Jimenez’s death heard Thursday.
Staffing at the Canada Border Services Agency’s airport holding cells, which is provided by Genesis Security, has been brought into sharp focus at the inquest with revelations from Sandhu Wednesday that room check logs were falsified because, he said, the checks cannot be safely carried out if there is only one security guard present.
The CBSA’s standing orders to Genesis regarding operation of the holding cells stipulate that there must be four guards on site at all times, one of whom must be female.
The female guard, who could have checked the shower, was doing a detainee pickup at Alouette Correctional Centre the morning of Dec. 20, 2013, when the incident happened, the inquest heard.
Asked by CBSA lawyer Graham Stark if he had ever raised the staffing issue with his superiors, Li responded that he had and was told Genesis was looking for more people, but security clearances were taking a long time.
Genesis staff were not given suicide prevention training, either by their employer or by CBSA, but there was a package of reading material on the subject in the guard room, which they were not allowed to take home, said Li, who no longer works for the company.
Phil Rankin, lawyer for the Canadian Council of Refugees, drew attention to working conditions at Genesis, asking Li if he agreed there was a high turnover because the rate of pay was $15 to $18 an hour.
Employees have to pay about $400 for their own security training, Li said, adding that he had to pay for his own duty belt and for half the cost of a bulletproof vest.
New Democratic Party MP Randall Garrison, who has criticized the CBSA’s handling of the Jimenez case, called on Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney to take action to ensure both agency employees and contractors treat prisoners properly.
“I am shocked that people were falsifying records for keeping prisoners who are technically in the custody of the minister, and I’d like to know what he’s doing about that.”
He said the testimony shows Genesis employees are both inadequately trained and improperly supervised.
A spokesman for Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney wouldn’t comment on the testimony regarding the private security firm’s performance the day Jimenez took her life.
Since the incident, the shower rod has been removed, the curtain has been altered so that someone’s head and feet are visible, a sheet of frosted glass in the bathroom door has been removed and the window between the guards and the common room, which used to have blinds on it, has been replaced with a one-way window. Guards have also been told that they must verify a person is breathing during room checks.
Tabalujan, who still works for Genesis on occasion, testified that he may have had some suicide prevention training over the summer.
Earlier in the day, Christine Bloch, national manager for the detention monitoring program at the Canadian Red Cross, said the organization does not consider the airport holding centre appropriate for even short-term detentions because there is no access to natural light or fresh air.
The Red Cross recently produced an extensive report on the airport holding centre, but as per the terms of a memorandum of understanding with the CBSA to monitor immigration detention conditions, it cannot be made public.
But Bloch did read the recommendations from the report at the inquest, some of which included installing call buttons in cells, exercise equipment and access to fresh air within the facilities, multi-lingual reading materials, a designated place for religious practices, medical and mental health screening upon intake and before removal, establishing a procedure through which detainees can contact their family on a regular basis, increased use of alternatives to detention and an increased presence of CBSA officers in the detention facilities.