VANCOUVER — Global News has obtained more exclusive footage showing the holding cells at the Canadian Border Services Agency, where Lucia Jimenez was detained, before the Mexican woman committed suicide last December as she awaited deportation.
An inquest into Jimenez’s death started on Monday.
Yesterday, the CBSA tried to block the public from viewing the video, citing security concerns, but did not provide the inquest with any evidence of why it should not be seen.
The coroner determined the public has a right to see these tapes.
The most recent footage shows the underground CBSA cells at the Vancouver International Airport, underneath the Fairmont hotel.
Jimenez is seen walking into the holding cell with two Genesis security guards – the private security company contracted out by the CBSA. It’s December 11, the day before Jimenez is found hanging from a shower rod inside the facility.
She is brought in in handcuffs and put in a holding cell by herself.
She is then brought into another room, her body searched and her cuffs come off. Afterwards, she was brought through a metal detector.
Today, the Red Cross testified at the inquest, calling the holding cells “inappropriate.”
The inquest heard testimony the cells are “dungeon-like” with no sunlight, no access to support workers, or lawyers and that it’s not appropriate to house people awaiting deportation in that area along with other violent criminals.
“The facility is like an underground bunker, built like a bomb shelter,”Jason Gratl, with BC Civil Liberties, told Global News. “The beds are made out of concrete. There are small, plastic mats used for mattresses — that’s the type of facility ordinarily reserved for maximum security prisoners.”
READ MORE: Video shows 40 minute gap before Lucia Jimenez found hanging in YVR holding cell
–With files from Rumina Daya.
WATCH: Day four today of the coroner’s inquest into the suicide death of Lucia Jimenez, who hanged herself before she could be deported to Mexico. The inquest has been hearing from the security guard who had been guarding her. Rumina Daya has more details.
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