Teresa Michelle Gratton, a 50-year-old wife, mother and grandmother, died in immigration detention on Oct. 30. Her letters from behind bars shed light on her mindset in the days and weeks before her death.
Teresa Michelle Gratton, a U.S. citizen who died in a maximum-security jail in Milton on Oct. 30 while she was in immigration detention, wrote her husband, Herb Gratton, nearly every day she was behind bars. With her letters and publicly available documents related to her case, we can piece together a timeline of her final days.
Sept. 7: Gratton’s arrest
Gratton is arrested at the Walmart in White Oaks Mall in London, Ont., about a half-hour bus ride from her home, after trying to steal food and clothes. The following day she is interviewed by Canada Border Services Agency officer Mark Webb while awaiting her bail hearing. Gratton didn’t seek bail for her shoplifting charge because of border services hold on her, her lawyer said. Webb asked Gratton basic biographical questions and questions related to her immigration status, according to a short transcript he declared to a fellow border services officer. At the end of the interview Gratton asked, “So I won’t be able to go home today?”
Sept. 14: Day 8 of pre-trial custody
In a letter to her husband, Gratton, who suffers from chronic pain and is addicted to prescription opioids, writes that jail staff — it’s unclear who — only started giving her her medications two days ago, five days after she was taken into custody. They also dramatically reduced her prescribed dosage. “I’m going crazy in here,” she writes. “. . . Baby I’m so sorry again for everything.”
Sept. 17: Day 11 of pre-trial custody
“I love you & miss you so much sweetheart,” Gratton opens her letter. She writes that her stomach is swollen and bruised from police “throwing me down on it & putting their knees in my back & pushing down on it very hard.” She also laments that staff continues to keep her on a lower dosage of painkillers. She said she was only receiving 6 mg of hydromorphone twice a day when she was used to taking 19 mg twice a day. That number is corroborated by prescription slips provided to the Star by her husband. “I’m never out of pain. I’m still going through withdrawals. I’m so depressed every day. I don’t know what to do,” she writes.
Sept. 21: Day 15 of pre-trial custody
“Can’t sleep, going through real bad withdrawals. Throwing up and the works. . . . I miss all of y’all so so much. Y’all are all I have in this world and I love the Heaven out of all of you,” Gratton writes. “I’m going crazy, can never sleep, don’t eat much either. Stay depressed but most days I just feel like I wish I was dead. But y’all are my heartbeat so I just keep going through the bullsh-- hoping I’ll be home soon.”
Sept. 28: Day 22 of pre-trial custody
Gratton writes Herb to tell him to install a landline phone so she can call from jail. The jail doesn’t allow outgoing calls to cellphones.
“Don’t forget to say your prayers and have sweet, good dreams if you have any. I dreamed I was crying on Nanny’s shoulder nite before last. I could see her plain as day. It seemed so real. And she told me everything was going to be okay. I’ve never had a dream like that one before. I think she actually came and held me in my sleep and comforted me because of how emotional I am right now. I know it sounds crazy and maybe I am. I just know I cried on her shoulders and she held me in her arms and told me everything was going to be okay.”
Sept. 29: Day 23 of pre-trial custody
Gratton pleads guilty in a London courthouse to five criminal charges: theft under $5,000 for the shoplifting at Walmart; resisting the arresting officer; forging her doctor’s signature in January to get an early release of her prescription for hydromorphone, an opioid painkiller; and two counts of possessing hydromorphone. Gratton had a valid prescription but she had asked her doctor to extend her supply because she and Herb had just been evicted and were moving in with their son’s fiancée’s family in Sarnia. “I had no car, I was having major insomnia, and being addicted, you know, after being on it for 17 years, I did not want to go through the withdrawal and all the pain,” Gratton told Justice Bentley after pleading guilty. “So I was wrong for doing what I did and I admit that. But I also didn’t know what else to do. And I am sorry for that.” Gratton is sentenced to the 23 days she had already served plus one more day.
Oct. 1: Transfer to immigration detention
At the conclusion of her sentence, Gratton is automatically placed on immigration hold and is technically in the custody of the Canada Border Services Agency, although she is still in a provincial jail. On Oct. 1 or 2, she is transferred from Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre near her home in London to the Vanier Centre for Women in Milton. Neither Gratton nor her family was informed that the transfer would take place, according to Herb Gratton. He said he did not know where his wife was until she called him from the new jail.
Oct. 3: Day 3 of immigration detention
“Oh baby how I miss you so, so much,” Gratton writes. “They have totally f---ed us up. They moved me almost to Toronto to a place called Vanier Centre for Women. I’m in maximum security for some damn reason. I’m not sure even why they moved me here, but I didn’t get all of my meds last night … I’m hurting all over and I’m sick as hell this morning. This f---ing pain is unbearable.”
Gratton is scheduled to have her first detention review hearing with the Immigration and Refugee Board the next day but she writes that she doesn’t know when her hearing will be. She asks Herb to figure out if she needs a lawyer at the hearing. “I don’t know I just know I need you and your help as much as possible. You should call ODSP and ask if they pay for you to take a Voyageur bus to places you have to go, like this, to court.”
Oct. 4: Day 4 of immigration detention
The Immigration and Refugee Board conducts its 48-hour detention review hearing for Gratton inside the Vanier Centre for Women. Gratton does not have a lawyer or any family present. Her husband said they only knew of the hearing after it happened.
The Canada Border Services Agency representative, who acts as a kind of prosecutor for the quasi-judicial tribunal, recounts Gratton’s criminal convictions and immigration history and says they are seeking her continued detention on the grounds that she is a flight risk.
Gratton tries to explain the extenuating circumstances of her convictions.
“I may be addicted to the pain pills, and being on them for so long I did not want to go to Sarnia and not have my meds,” she said, crying.
Ron Stratigopoulos, the presiding board member who acts as the judge of the hearing, asks Gratton if she realizes that her 2013 convictions — for which she was sentenced to nine months house arrest — will likely lead to her deportation.
“I have three kids here who are grown and two grandchildren,” she says. “. . . My kids are all Canadian citizens born to a Canadian citizen outside of Canada. I have nothing in Tennessee or in the States, all my family is here.”
Stratigopoulos reiterates that Gratton will likely be ordered deported and he is concerned she would not show up for the deportation.
“Well if I’m told to leave Canada then I would have to do that, but that is not something that I want to do,” she said. “So I am going to retain a lawyer and try and fight it, but if I was made to leave I would have to go.”
Stratigopoulos sides with border services and orders Gratton’s continued detention. In his decision, he said her addiction to opioids “does not speak well to your ability to follow lawful orders as they are imposed against you. So I do not think that I can simply release you on your own signature today.”
Statistically it will now become increasingly difficult for Gratton to secure her release, since adjudicators at her subsequent detention reviews must find “clear and compelling reasons” to depart from a previous member’s finding.
Oct. 4: Day 4 of immigration detention
“I know I’m giving up on life in here. I’m lost and I just want to come home. I did my time for my crime. So I forgot to apply for citizenship . . . I haven’t seen the psychiatrist yet. I know I need to badly. I’m tripping out . . . I’ve done my time for my crime, now I’m being held in a maximum security cell block on a f---ing hold because I failed to apply for citizenship last year when my whole f---ing life was turned upside down. My Dad died, Mom’s house burned down, our car blew up, got kicked onto the streets in f---ing Jan 2017. Lost everything we owned and had to live with f---ing in-laws til we could find a place. Like how the hell do they expect people to live life and remember everything. . . . I’m angry, I’m scared, I’m alone & I’m tired & I don’t know what to do. I’m so lost without you.”
Oct. 7: Day 7 of immigration detention
“I can’t stop thinking about Wednesday the 11th, coming home finally is going to be so nice,” Gratton wrote to her husband, referring to the date of her second detention review hearing, when she hoped to be released. Gratton complains again of the severe opioid withdrawal symptoms and the fact that doctors were giving her less than one-third of her usual dosage. “They won’t let me even talk to the psychiatrist,” she writes. “Because they know he will put me back on my medications.”
Oct. 9: Day 9 of immigration detention
“I’m so nervous & sick & scared that something’s going to go wrong & I won’t be able to get out of here. It makes me sick at my stomach, but I’m trying to stay strong and be positive and believe that God is going to get me out of here. So many people are telling me so many different things that I’m scared to death. I just want to go home. . . . I don’t know what I’m going to do if I don’t get out of here soon . . . I’ll die in here. I can’t do this sh--, I’m too old.”
Oct. 11: Day 11 of immigration detention
Gratton’s second detention review hearing is held at Vanier. She still doesn’t have a lawyer. But this time her husband, Herb Gratton, and her daughter-in-law, Joan Howe, have come as prospective bondspeople. Because of the limited facilities at the jail, they are interviewed by the presiding board member and the border services representative in the lobby, without Gratton present. Joo Eun Kim, an immigration lawyer for Legal Aid Ontario who was eventually assigned to Gratton’s case, said this amounts to a “huge procedural fairness breach.”
Herb Gratton says he is prepared to post a $5,000 performance bond — as he had done once before in criminal court — but he doesn’t have the means to make a cash deposit. The border services representative asked if he had assets that amount to $15,000, or three times the proposed performance bond. “I’ve got furniture,” Gratton says, adding that he had “probably $30” in savings.
When they resume the hearing with Gratton in the jail, Singh says the proposed bondspeople don’t qualify because of their limited resources and the government is seeking Gratton’s continued detention. Given a chance to make a submission herself, Gratton says she is not a flight risk. “I like my family. I want to be with them. That is where I want to go. And if it should happen that I have to leave Canada, I’m prepared to do that. I’m prepared to do whatever needs to be done. I just want to go home,” she said, crying.
In her decision, presiding board member Karen Greenwood twice makes reference to Gratton’s “substance abuse issues” impacting her reliability.
Oct. 11: Day 11 of immigration detention
After the hearing Gratton wrote another letter to her husband, in which she thanked them for coming down to the hearing to try to get her out and complained that the doctors had again reduced the dosage of her opioids. “I really don’t want to be deported, but I want out of here at almost any cost. I’m just in so much pain and my body literally hurts so, so bad. I’d rather be dead than to keep going through this pain.”
Oct. 23: Day 23 of immigration detention
Gratton writes that she had just been “thrown into suicide watch” because she wrote in her last letter that she wanted to kill herself. While she was removed from her cell, all of her personal effects — makeup, snack food, pencil crayons, her Bible — were stolen by other inmates. “I really don’t know how much more I can take baby. I can’t wait to get out of here. I’m going crazy. I thought Canada was a good country. I never dreamed they’d lock me up and throw away the key when I have no charges at all on me. I do not deserve this at all.”
Oct. 26: Day 26 of immigration detention
“I’m in so much f---ing pain it’s not even funny, a lot more than usual. . . . I have to get out of here real soon or I’m going to start having panic attacks & anxiety attacks. I already feel like I can’t breathe.”
Oct. 27: Day 27 of immigration detention
“I miss you so much my love. I can’t wait till Nov. 8 to get out of here,” Gratton wrote, referring to the date of her next detention review hearing. “I can’t wait to see you, well, all y’all really. Most of all I can’t wait to get out of here and come home. I’m going to close this letter out now. I hope you rest good tonight & say your prayers. Pray for me. Nite my love. Love you always forever & a day. Your wife, Michelle Gratton xoxo.”
Oct. 30: Day 30 of immigration detention
Gratton was found “in medical distress” by jail guards and “immediately” taken to hospital. She died “shortly thereafter,” according to the Canada Border Services Agency, which has not released her cause of death. Ontario’s chief coroner is investigating.
Brendan Kennedy
Toronto Star
Dec 16, 2017