A Chinese woman detained by U.S. border officers for overstaying a visitor visa died by suicide while being held at a border patrol station in Arizona, a Democratic congresswoman said.
The woman had been taken into custody in California after officers determined that she had overstayed a visitor visa, Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington said in a statement, citing the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency. She was transferred to a patrol station in Yuma, Ariz., the statement said.
Ms. Jayapal, a ranking member of the House subcommittee overseeing immigration, said initial reports from the agency had raised concerns about whether officers had properly conducted welfare checks on the woman. While welfare checks were logged, officials at the agency investigating the death could not verify whether the checks had actually happened, Ms. Jayapal said.
“There is no excuse for why agents cannot verify if some of the necessary welfare checks occurred — or why some of the documented welfare checks were incorrectly reported,” Ms. Jayapal said, adding that she was concerned about the conditions in facilities where immigrants are detained.
“Another preventable death only increases that concern,” she said.
The woman had been in the country on a B-1/B-2 visa, according to the statement, a temporary visa for people visiting the United States for tourism or business.
“All in-custody deaths are tragic, taken seriously, and are thoroughly investigated by C.B.P.,” a spokesman for the agency said in a statement on Friday, adding that the agency was investigating the woman’s death.
According to the spokesman, each holding cell in the station was under constant video surveillance, but observation of the woman was limited at the time because she was in a bathroom stall, “where cameras were not able to capture the full angle.”
Earlier, the agency told The Tucson Sentinel that the woman had become “unresponsive in a cell” at the Yuma Border Patrol Station.
Border Patrol staff provided medical assistance to the woman, the spokesman said in a statement to The Sentinel, and emergency medical services transported her to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead. An office overseeing the agency’s conduct was investigating the incident, the statement said, and the agency also reported the death to the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General.
The exact circumstances around the woman’s initial detainment were not immediately clear. Border Patrol officials for the Yuma sector, which includes parts of California and Arizona, said last week on social media that they had arrested two Chinese people, one of them a 52-year-old woman, in Needles, Calif., on March 26.
According to the post, agents searched a minivan during a vehicle stop and discovered that two Chinese nationals were “illegally present in the U.S.” The agency had planned to charge the two people under a law that makes certain people ineligible to receive a visa or enter the country, including on the grounds of suspected money laundering or other criminal activity.
More than $220,000 in cash was also seized from the van, and the agency said it believed the cash was linked to illegal activity. But it was not immediately clear on Friday whether the woman arrested in Needles was the same woman who died while in custody.
Christine Hauser contributed reporting.
