A 38-year-old Romanian woman with diagnosed bipolar disorder is on life support at a Mesa hospital after an apparent suicide attempt inside Eloy Detention Center, according to her family. Andreea Marin had been detained at the Arizona facility for less than two weeks before she was found unconscious and airlifted to Banner Desert Medical Center on Friday, Oct. 23.
Marin's brother told the Arizona Daily Star that doctors said the personnel who transported Marin told them she had tried to hang herself in her cell. He said she may not have been receiving her bipolar medication while detained at Eloy, located roughly 50 miles northwest of Tucson. The family is demanding a full investigation into how she was treated at the ICE facility.
CoreCivic, which operates Eloy under contract with ICE, confirmed in a statement that a detainee was hospitalized Friday after being found unconscious in their cell around noon. A staff member called a medical emergency after discovering the unresponsive person in a living area. CoreCivic said it notified ICE of the incident immediately. ICE handles medical care at Eloy through its healthcare arm, ICE Health Services Corp.
A Chaotic Path Into ICE Custody
According to Marin's brother, her path to Eloy began with a manic episode in October 2025 that led to her arrest and a charge of aggravated assault on a corrections employee. She was later stabilized at a Glendale treatment facility and returned to work in Tempe. Her brother said she was not convicted of a felony.
The family says a court notice related to her case was returned as undeliverable, and Marin missed an Oct. 1 Maricopa County Superior Court hearing tied to the 2025 charge. Her brother said police arrested her this month after finding a warrant during a traffic stop for running a stop sign, and that immigration agents detained her after she left the police station. A judge later ordered Marin released and rescheduled her missed hearing for Tuesday, Oct. 27.
Marin's brother described her as someone who had built a life split between continents — she earned a master's degree in education and child development, taught English in France, and returned to the United States around 2017, traveling with her cat, Thomas. He said she had been in the process of obtaining a green card and citizenship through her naturalized U.S.-citizen mother. Her brother said hospital staff notified the family of her hospitalization on Sunday, and that she was found handcuffed to her hospital bed by her wrists and ankles — a sight that caused her mother to faint, according to his account. He added that neither ICE nor Eloy had contacted the family with an explanation or condolences.
A reporter also requested detainee names along with alien identification numbers or dates of birth from ICE this week, but the agency did not immediately respond to the Star's request for comment.
Part of a Troubling Pattern at Eloy
Marin's case follows other recent incidents at the same facility. In April, Cuban asylum seeker Alexander Hernández survived a suicide attempt at Eloy and remained detained there afterward. Per the Star's reporting, Hernández said he was sent to solitary confinement after seeking back-pain treatment and was later hospitalized.
Eloy's 700-bed adult facility has recorded 15 detainee deaths since 2003, according to the American Immigration Council. Elsewhere in Arizona, 56-year-old Haitian national Emmanuel Damas died at a Scottsdale hospital in March after being airlifted from CoreCivic's Florence Correctional Center; his family said doctors attributed his death to septic shock stemming from an untreated tooth infection. A Maricopa County Medical Examiner report later traced Damas's death, documented by AZFamily, to complications of an infection tied to severe dental disease after he was airlifted out of Florence for a higher level of care less than two weeks before he died.
A Nationwide Surge in Deaths
The pattern extends well beyond Arizona. At least 10 ICE detainees, all men, have died by suicide since President Trump returned to office in January 2025, according to an Associated Press review cited by The Guardian. Those suicides account for nearly one-fifth of the 51 deaths recorded in ICE custody during that span, and the AP review found that staff at ICE facilities ignored signs of distress, delayed mental-health treatment, failed to monitor detainees already flagged as at risk, and allowed access to materials that could be used for self-harm. Five of the detainees who died by suicide were held in centers run by CoreCivic or the GEO Group, the same outlet reported. ICE has repeatedly asserted that it screens detainees within 12 hours of arrival for medical, dental, and mental-health conditions.
At least 61 people had died in ICE custody under the Trump administration. ICE's own written standards call for a suicide-prevention program at each facility, including staff training to recognize signs of mental illness and suicide risk, according to documents posted on ICE.gov. Whether those standards were followed in Marin's case has not been established.
