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.
Victoria police are investigating the death, which they described as non-suspicious. The coroner’s court of Victoria said it had directed police to prepare a brief of evidence.
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There were 360 reported incidents of threatened and actual self-harm across Australia’s onshore immigration detention network between July 2025 and March 2026, according to parliamentary records. There have been at least two deaths this year.
A Secure Journeys spokesperson said the company offered its “deep condolences to the family and friends of the female detainee” but could not comment further due to the investigation.
“Secure Journeys’ commitment to maintaining safe and secure operations, as well as both staff and detainee welfare remains our top priority,” the spokesperson said.
The Department of Home Affairs offered sincere condolences to the woman’s family and friends. “Due to our privacy obligations to the deceased and the ongoing investigation into this matter, it would not be appropriate to comment further,” a spokesperson said.
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China experts described the embassy’s statement as “firm but not excessive”.
The Australia-China Relations Institute’s director, Prof James Laurenceson, said the fact that representations had been made and the embassy had expressed “grave concerns” showed it was taking the death seriously.
But Laurenceson said he didn’t read the embassy’s statement as “excessively aggressive”.
“It is the case that Australia and China have been trading tersely worded diplomatic statements more frequently in recent months over everything from Taiwan, China’s maritime claims in the South China Sea, its cyber operations, the Jimmy Lai case, Darwin Port, and more,” he said. “But I am not convinced that China’s statement in this case should be interpreted as some sort of diplomatic slap back for Australian complaints about Chinese actions in other contexts.”
MTC’s performance in running Australia’s onshore detention network has triggered multiple investigations, including by the federal work safety regulator Comcare.
Internal documents show Comcare has set up a dedicated inspection program to scrutinise immigration detention, citing an “increase in notifiable incidents, the severity and the profile of the reported incidents involving the [contractor]”.
The regulator privately warned the department this year that it had received numerous reports of “serious injury or illness to both workers and others (detainees)”, “self-harm ideations and death involving detainees” and “detainee on detainee violence”.
One of Comcare’s key concerns is that the risk-assessment system used in the centres is not effective and is putting staff and detainees at serious risk of violence and other harms.
Understaffing has been a key concern since MTC took over.
A March report by the National Preventive Mechanism, an independent monitor of places of detention, reported that “critically” low staffing levels were compromising the centres’ safety.
The understaffing is also causing seriously ill detainees to miss medical appointments because MTC lacks workers to escort them to health centres.
* Do you know more? Email christopher.knaus@theguardian.com or ariel.bogle@theguardian.com
