The last time Eduardo saw his best friend, Kesley Vial, a 23-year-old asylum seeker from Brazil, Vial was unconscious. He had been found hanging from a shelf in his cell at the Torrance County Detention Facility, a sheet tied around his neck. Seven days later, at a hospital in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Vial died.
Eduardo, who is from Ecuador and was also being held at Torrance, a private Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center about an hour southwest of Albuquerque, was already depressed. But Vial’s death pushed him into a crisis that’s still difficult to talk about. Kesley “was a joyous person, a good person. He danced that morning. He danced almost every day,” said Eduardo, who asked to go by a pseudonym for safety. “But being locked up in there is hell.”
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