EL PASO, Texas — The Jan. 3 killing of Geraldo Lunas Campos, a 55-year-old Cuban national who died after being asphyxiated by ICE agents at the Camp East Montana detention facility in El Paso, received little public attention or outrage, even as other ICE-related violence later sparked national condemnation.
Reporting for Solitary Watch, Jean Casella details the homicide of Lunas Campos, who was held at Camp East Montana, ICE’s largest detention facility in the country, and whose death initially went largely unnoticed in the national press.
Casella contrasts the silence surrounding Lunas Campos’ death with the intense public reaction to the Minneapolis shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, Americans killed by masked ICE agents, incidents she describes as a “spectacle” that may represent a turning point in U.S. domestic politics.
Shortly before those Minneapolis shootings, ICE agents killed Lunas Campos in El Paso, Texas, a case Casella argues should have prompted equal outrage.
Casella cites reporting by the Texas Tribune, which, after visiting the El Paso facility, alleged that “detained immigrants are subject to beatings and sexual abuse by officers, as well as medical neglect, hunger and insufficient food, and denial of access to attorneys.”
Lunas Campos had bipolar disorder and was receiving medication for depression, according to Casella’s report.
In an interview with The Washington Post, another detainee housed in the solitary confinement unit with Lunas Campos, Santos Jesus Flores, said he witnessed at least five guards struggling with Lunas Campos after he refused to enter segregation, complaining that he did not have access to his medications.
Flores said he saw guards choking Lunas Campos and heard him cry out, “No puedo respirar.” He added, “He said, ‘I cannot breathe, I cannot breathe.’ After that, we don’t hear his voice anymore, and that’s it.”
On Jan. 21, the El Paso County Office of the Medical Examiner reported the cause of death as “asphyxia due to neck and torso compression” and ruled the death a homicide.
Casella reports that the Trump administration initially blamed Lunas Campos and described his death as a suicide.
In a subsequent statement, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said, “Campos violently resisted the security staff and continued to attempt to take his life. During the ensuing struggle, Campos stopped breathing and lost consciousness.”
Days after Lunas Campos’ death, Victor Manuel Diaz, a Nicaraguan national detained during the Minneapolis ICE raids, died of a “presumed suicide” at the same El Paso facility.
Casella writes that since the beginning of Trump’s second presidency, at least six more people have been killed by ICE and DHS agents, according to a new database compiled by The American Prospect.
That database also documents at least 20 other deaths in ICE custody between January and October 2025, many of which were officially ruled suicides.
Casella argues that “the welfare of incarcerated people has never received much attention in the world of American politics—as if the fact that an individual has been convicted of a crime justifies whatever may happen to them subsequently, up to and including death.”
Preventable deaths among incarcerated people reached “epidemic proportions” long ago, Casella reports, noting that at least 30 percent of jail deaths are ruled suicides and that a disproportionate number occur in solitary confinement.
She adds that the federal government should be tracking these deaths more reliably, but the existing data is incomplete and unreliable.
The lack of outrage over the deaths of Lunas Campos, Manuel Diaz and the more than 20 others who have died in ICE custody “comes as no surprise to those of us who cover the U.S. carceral system,” Casella writes.
She concludes by arguing that one place to begin addressing these tragedies is simple but essential: saying their names.
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Categories: Breaking News Immigration National Issues Tags: El Paso Human Rights ICE Detention immigration enforcement In-Custody Deaths Solitary Confinement