Just over a month after Johana Medina Leon was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and booked into New Mexico’s Otero County Processing Center, her health was in free fall. She was transferred to an El Paso hospital where she died on June 1, 2019.
She had been hurriedly released from custody while hospitalized. The circumstances surrounding her release and death were discovered in one report among more than 16,000 pages of documents disclosed as part of an ongoing lawsuit brought by The Times against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security seeking records of abuse at immigration detention centers. Her case was investigated by the DHS Office of Inspector General, a watchdog agency with oversight of ICE.
