The Texas Tribune<\/a> \u2014 The body of a migrant who died at an El Paso immigration detention center was sent to a military hospital rather than the county medical examiner who investigated two previous deaths at the facility \u2014 and concluded that one of them was a homicide rather than a suicide.\u00a0<\/p>\nVictor Manuel Diaz, a 36-year-old Nicaraguan, died Jan. 14 at Camp East Montana, a massive tent facility the federal government built on the Fort Bliss Army base. According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Diaz was found unconscious and unresponsive in his room and died of \u201ca presumed suicide.\u201d<\/p>\n
Diaz\u2019s autopsy is being performed at the William Beaumont Army Medical Center in Fort Bliss, which doesn\u2019t release autopsy reports to the public \u2014 only to family members and investigators, according to Jessia Rovero, a public affairs officer at Fort Bliss.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This comes after the El Paso Medical Examiner recently ruled a previous detainee\u2019s death a homicide, contradicting ICE\u2019s contention that he died by suicide.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Geraldo Lunas Campos, a 55-year-old Cuban, died at Camp East Montana on Jan. 3, just 11 days before Diaz\u2019s death. Initially, an ICE press release said Lunas Campos died after \u201cexperiencing medical distress.\u201d About a week later, ICE told the Associated Press that he died during a suicide attempt after staff attempted to save him.<\/p>\n
The El Paso Medical Examiner\u2019s autopsy report, released on Jan. 21, says Lunas Campos died from \u201casphyxia due to neck and torso compression,\u201d meaning that he couldn\u2019t breathe because of pressure on his neck and chest. It\u2019s unclear whether the medical examiner\u2019s finding will lead to criminal charges or prosecution.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Randall Kallinen, Diaz\u2019s family\u2019s attorney, said the public outcry over that homicide ruling may explain why ICE turned to a military hospital to do the next autopsy of a migrant who died in their custody.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy did they go against their previous practice?\u201d Kallinen said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
ICE did not respond to questions about Diaz\u2019s autopsy.<\/p>\n
Ang\u00e9lica C\u00e9sar, a fellow at Human Rights Watch, said the concern isn\u2019t just about where Diaz\u2019s autopsy is being done, \u201cbut really who controls the process and whether it’s independent from (the U.S. Department of Homeland Security\u2019s) custodial authority.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe more credible approach here would have been for local, independent authorities with no institutional ties to DHS to conduct the autopsy and the investigation,\u201d C\u00e9sar said. \u201cAnd this would ultimately protect both the families and the integrity of the investigative process itself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kallinen said Diaz\u2019s family is not convinced he took his own life. He said they spoke to Diaz, who lived alone in the U.S., by phone from Nicaragua and he didn\u2019t sound depressed. If he had been deported back to Nicaragua, his entire family was there to receive him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“He was not a criminal; he was looking for a better life and he wanted to help our mother,” Diaz\u2019s brother, Yorlan Diaz, told ABC News.<\/p>\n
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.\u00a0The Texas Tribune<\/a>\u00a0is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans \u2014 and engages with them \u2014 about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ICE bypassed the county medical examiner in favor of a military facility for the autopsy of a Nicaraguan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150881,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,140,139],"class_list":{"0":"post-150880","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-el-paso","8":"tag-el-paso","9":"tag-el-paso-headlines","10":"tag-el-paso-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}