Exclusive: Serious questions raised about whether Chinese citizen was properly monitored at centre run by US prison giant
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The US private prison company running Australia’s immigration system was warned that a newly detained Chinese citizen expressed suicidal ideation and had a history of self-harm less than 24 hours before she died by suicide in a Melbourne detention centre, internal documents show.
The death has raised serious questions about whether the detainee was properly monitored and whether she was placed in an appropriate room, given her state of mind.
It has also triggered an intervention from Australia’s biggest trading partner, Guardian Australia can reveal.
The Chinese embassy has confirmed it has “lodged solemn representations and expressed grave concern to the Australian side” about the circumstances of the death.
“China will closely follow the case and safeguard the safety and legitimate rights and interests of Chinese citizens,” an embassy spokesperson said.
China’s public intervention creates a fresh headache for the home affairs minister, Tony Burke, who is already furious about a string of security lapses involving the government’s new immigration contractor, Secure Journeys, a local subsidiary of the US-based prison multinational Management and Training Corporation.
In May the Guardian revealed that a series of failures had allowed the escape of high-risk detainees, caused ill-equipped staff to be stabbed and hospitalised and triggered multiple investigations, one of which warned that MTC’s “minimalist staffing model” was putting workers and detainees at risk.
Burke took the extraordinary step of hauling in the global president of MTC for a face-to-face dressing down in September 2025, just six months after the company was awarded the $2.3bn onshore immigration detention contract.
On 10 July Australian Border Force issued a short statement saying a detainee had been found dead in the Melbourne immigration detention centre that morning.
The detainee was a Chinese citizen in her mid-30s who had been picked up the day before for allegedly overstaying an English-language studies visa, internal documents seen by the Guardian show. She had no criminal history.
The ABF transferred her into the custody of Secure Journeys on the afternoon of 9 July.
The ABF made clear to Secure Journeys that she had previously attempted self-harm and had “recently thought about self-harm/suicide”, the documents show.
She was found hanging in her room in the Broadmeadows residential precinct, part of the Melbourne immigration detention centre, early the next morning.