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Jeh Johnson, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, has announced that he is to review whether to continue using private prisons for immigration detention. But it doesn鈥檛 take a study to figure out that the system Secretary Johnson runs is and causes . We should stop filling for-profit prison beds with asylum-seekers, children, and thousands of others who never got a fair day in court.

If Secretary Johnson wants to understand the stakes, he should ask the family of , a 31-year-old man who last year committed suicide at the Eloy, Arizona, detention facility run by the private Corrections Corporation of America. After being admitted to the facility, Mr. Deniz Sahagun described a history of self-harm. But he was nevertheless put in a general population unit. It wasn鈥檛 until his paranoid thoughts and erratic behavior disturbed others that he was put on suicide watch. But the next day, a doctor ordered him removed to a lower level of supervision.

The guards carried out the doctor鈥檚 order and stepped down their observations of his cell. Within hours, Mr. Deniz Sahagun grabbed an orange sock and shoved it deep down his throat, blocking his own windpipe. While making rounds, a CCA guard noticed Mr. Deniz Sahagun lying motionless and facedown on the floor of his cell. He was still alive. As the guard and his colleagues debated whether to enter, Mr. Deniz Sahagun continued to suffocate. Eventually, paramedics entered and tried to revive him 鈥� but it was too late. He was in his cell.

If Immigration and Customs Enforcement had cancelled its contract with CCA in Eloy, Mr. Deniz Sahagun might still be alive. Instead, he became the to commit suicide at Eloy in a dozen years. And ICE knew long before Mr. Deniz Sahagun鈥檚 death that Eloy was inadequately equipped to prevent suicide: A even found that the suicide watch room 鈥� the place where people at the most acute risk of suicide are supposed to be housed and whose chief purpose is to deny them the means to kill themselves 鈥� contained 鈥渟tructures or smaller objects that could be used in a suicide attempt.鈥� Still, Eloy got a passing rating on the inspection.

And Eloy is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to ICE鈥檚 renewal of contracts with private prisons that fail to safeguard the lives of people in their custody. Across the country, 73 percent of the approximately 34,000 people held in ICE detention facilities are in the custody of private prison companies. These are the very same private prison companies that the Justice Department condemned in its August 18 memorandum and whose prisons the Justice Department鈥檚 inspector general were more dangerous than federally run prisons and were failing to meet the government鈥檚 contractual standards. In one case, the company chose to operate without a full-time physician for eight months, apparently because it cost less to pay understaffing penalties than a doctor鈥檚 salary.

There鈥檚 no question that there鈥檚 a lot of money at stake in immigration detention contracts for the private companies and their investors. For example, 28 percent of CCA鈥檚 revenue comes from ICE detention, according to the company鈥檚 first quarter 2016 . That is more revenue than CCA receives from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, California, Texas, and the company鈥檚 home state of Tennessee combined.

But that cannot compare to the life-or-death stakes for people like Mr. Deniz Sahagun and his family. It is time to end the federal government鈥檚 relationship with these predatory companies, once and for all.