![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1771534991_440_20250709-Camp-East-Montana-ICE-PR-15.jpg\")
An aerial view of the East Montana Detention Facility at Fort Bliss on the outskirts of El Paso on Sept. 7, 2025. Credit: Texas Tribune \/ Paul Ratje<\/p>\nAn aerial view of the East Montana Detention Facility at Fort Bliss on the outskirts of El Paso on Sept. 7, 2025. Credit: Texas Tribune \/ Paul Ratje<\/p>\n
The 911 call reported an apparent suicide.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A 55-year-old Cuban \u201ctried to hang himself,\u201d a federal contractor alerted emergency responders last month from a sprawling El Paso immigrant detention center.\u00a0<\/p>\n
By the next day, records show that Geraldo Lunas Campos had died at the facility, marking the second fatality in weeks at the hastily constructed Fort Bliss Army tent structure known as Camp East Montana. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials attributed his death to \u201cmedical distress.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the medical examiner ruled<\/a> his death a homicide \u2014 he was suffocated. The autopsy found that Lunas Campos became \u201cunresponsive while being physically restrained by law enforcement.\u201d<\/p>\n His death, which has so far prompted no criminal investigation or charges, has renewed scrutiny not only on that camp, but on conditions at the nearly two dozen<\/a> ICE detention sites in Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the span of just six weeks between December and January, six people died while detained by ICE in Texas \u2014 three of them at Camp East Montana. The deadly period began with a 48-year-old Guatemalan, Francisco Gaspar-Andres, who ICE said<\/a> died on Dec. 3 of liver and kidney failure after being hospitalized for more than two weeks following detention.\u00a0<\/p>\n Detention facilities are seeing more overcrowding and understaffing as the Trump administration ramps up enforcement in the interior of the country, experts said. Unlawful border crossings have plummeted<\/a> due to the administration\u2019s restrictions. Federal data shows that most current ICE detainees are not accused of crimes beyond civil immigration offenses<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The expansion of ICE detention is \u201ccoupled with a dissolution of oversight, a reduction in detention standards, and draconian restrictions on releases,\u201d said Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former senior ICE official during the last three administrations. \u201cThat appears destined to lead to more deaths, medical issues and trauma for detainees.\u201d<\/p>\n Thirty-two people died in ICE custody nationwide last year, surpassing the previous high of 20 in 2005, according to federal data. Nearly a quarter of last year\u2019s deaths occurred in Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n Scott Shuchart, a former head of policy at ICE under Biden and senior adviser under Trump\u2019s first term to DHS\u2019 Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, said the agency \u201cstruggled to ensure adequate medical care\u201d when its detainee population was 35,000. Now it is more than doubling that number.<\/p>\n The government last October<\/a> also temporarily stopped paying many medical providers due to bureaucratic changes under the administration. As a result, ICE for months has been unable to reimburse health care officials, including for prescription medication, dialysis and chemotherapy, according to redacted <\/a>ICE documents<\/a> first reported<\/a> by Popular Information.\u00a0<\/p>\n Spokespeople for the Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not respond to detailed questions.<\/p>\n Texas is the last stop for most immigrants caught in the administration\u2019s dragnet, with more than 18,700 people detained in the state\u2019s ICE facilities as of February the nation\u2019s highest share, according<\/a> to federal data analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonprofit that analyzes government data obtained via public records requests. Over the past six months, an average of four deportation flights have departed the state daily, the most in the country, according to ICE Flight Monitor<\/a>, a nonprofit that tracks them. And a significant percentage <\/a>of growing unlawful<\/a> detention cases filed in federal courts stem from Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n The state is the \u201cblueprint and the epicenter of the country\u2019s immigration enforcement system, acting as the deportation funnel,\u201d said Kristin Etter, director of policy and legal services at the statewide advocacy group Texas Immigration Law Council, \u201cTexas is where immigration enforcement begins, where it ends, and sometimes, where it does both.\u201d <\/p>\n What\u2019s happening at Camp East Montana?<\/p>\n The massive East Montana tent camp is currently the country\u2019s largest ICE detention center, holding more than 3,000 men and women on a military base that\u2019s seen as a model for what the administration plans to build.<\/p>\n Constructed in a record two months<\/a> last summer after the government granted a $1.2 billion contract<\/a> to Acquisition Logistics, a small Virginia corporation with no listed experienc<\/a>e running detention facilities, the camp has been plagued with problems since it opened. Claims of medical neglect, spoiled, insufficient food and unsanitary conditions are rife and advocates call it an \u201cunfolding humanitarian crisis.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n More than 45 people detained there alleged<\/a> abuse and serious injuries to attorneys, according to a letter<\/a> advocacy groups sent to DHS and ICE supervisors in December. Those allegations included a teen hospitalized after he accused staff of slamming him to the ground and beating him. The detention staffers blocked the security cameras, he said, and \u201cgrabbed my testicles and firmly crushed them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n ICE\u2019s own inspectors found at least 60 violations at the facility shortly after it opened, the Washington Post first reported<\/a> in September, including that the contractors had employed little more than a half of the security personnel it had promised. DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, who did not respond to repeated requests from The Texas Tribune, said in a statement<\/a> that \u201cany claim that there are \u2018inhumane\u2019 conditions at ICE detention centers are categorically false.\u201d She said detainees are provided \u201cproper meals,\u201d medical treatment and clean clothing.\u00a0<\/p>\n Two officials who viewed that ICE investigative report or were briefed by the agency additionally told the Tribune that the facility had no policy detailing when or how contractors can use force. It lacked a compliance manager designated to oversee sexual assault allegations, required<\/a> under federal regulations. Contractors were also provided only 40 hours of training, a fraction of at least 42 <\/a>days typically required of regular ICE agents, according to those officials who were not authorized to speak publicly.<\/p>\n Acquisition Logistics and two of its contractors in charge of detention and medical care did not respond to questions so it is unclear if those conditions have since improved and if new policies were instituted.\u00a0<\/p>\n U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, an El Paso Democrat who has visited the site at least a half dozen times, said the conditions at East Montana are rapidly \u201cdeteriorating.\u201d<\/p>\n After tuberculosis and COVID-19 cases, both highly infectious contagions, were confirmed<\/a> there, Escobar said that employees told her not to enter a certain area because detainees had yet to be tested. Few people wore masks.<\/p>\n \u201cAll it takes is one major public health issue where there\u2019s not been enough oversight, where human life and safety and welfare is not prioritized, for there to be a massive health impact on the community,\u201d Escobar said in an interview. \u201cAmericans should care when these massive tent cities or massive warehouses are very quickly put up and filled with thousands of human beings and are run by corporations that are prioritizing profits, not people.\u201d <\/p>\n What happened to Lunas Campos? <\/p>\n Despite the crescendo of complaints at East Montana, none have resonated publicly as much as the death of Lunas Campos.<\/p>\n Six El Paso detainees described in federal court statements that the father of three, who lived in Rochester, N.Y., for nearly 20 years before ICE detained him in July, begged for days to receive his asthma medication. Detention staff refused and threatened him with solitary confinement, inmates said.\u00a0<\/p>\n After Lunas Campos was dragged in shackles to an isolation unit, detainees recalled \u201cwhat sounded like the slamming of a person\u2019s body against the floor or a wall.\u201d They said they heard him gasp that he could no longer breathe. Then, \u201csilence.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Chris Benoit, a lawyer for his children suing the government, said they \u201cwant to establish the truth about what the guards did to their father and demand accountability for his death.\u201d<\/p>\n Local and federal prosecutors have yet to say <\/a>whether they would seek criminal charges following the medical examiner\u2019s ruling that the death of Lunas Campos, who had long\u2013standing previous criminal convictions including child sex assault, was a homicide. Experts said that state prosecutors have precedent to pursue such charges despite the death occurring on military property, which is under federal jurisdiction. It remains under internal investigation.\u00a0<\/p>\n The federal government tried to deport detainees who witnessed Lunas Campos\u2019 last moments. A federal judge in Texas so far has blocked that attempt.<\/p>\n Trickler-McNulty, the former senior ICE official, said that instance was the first immigrant death linked to a homicide involving ICE staff that she could recall in at least 15 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n Fatalities in ICE custody are typically the result of poor medical care or suicides, said Shuchart, the former Trump oversight official.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cDeaths from staff violence are another level,\u201d he said, calling them \u201cpreventable, and the result of training and supervision failures.\u201d <\/p>\n What about the other ICE detention deaths?<\/p>\n Eleven days after Lunas Campos died, 36-year-old Victor Manuel Diaz marked the third fatality <\/a>in six weeks at the El Paso tent camp.\u00a0<\/p>\n The 911 call was similar: \u201cWe got a situation here,\u201d a contractor told emergency responders. \u201cThey found someone who tried to commit suicide.\u201d Guards, he added, found the Nicaraguan man with pants tied around his neck.\u00a0<\/p>\n Unlike Lunas Campos, Diaz\u2019s body was sent to a U.S. Army hospital<\/a> rather than the local medical examiner, where a military spokesperson said that the agency would not make his autopsy public.<\/p>\n His family does not believe his death was a suicide, according to their attorney Randall Kallinen.\u00a0<\/p>\n Of the nine people who died in Texas ICE facilities since Trump\u2019s second term, many were in their mid-forties. Although the agency declared that they mostly died of natural causes, investigations are pending in several cases and many autopsies have not been released.<\/p>\n Tien Xuan Phan<\/a>, a 55-year-old Vietnamese man held at the Karnes County Immigration Processing Center outside San Antonio, for example, died last July. ICE claimed he experienced seizures and vomiting, then became unresponsive.\u00a0<\/p>\n Eight months later, the Bexar County District Attorney\u2019s office declined to release Xuan Phan\u2019s autopsy, citing a \u201cpending\u201d federal investigation.\u00a0<\/p>\n What is supposed to happen if someone dies in ICE custody?<\/p>\n Congress imposed strict rules <\/a>on how deaths in ICE custody should be reported, which include publicly posting <\/a>\u201crelevant details\u201d within two business days and requiring ICE\u2019s Office of Professional Responsibility to investigate each death and provide a report to senior management. Within 90 days, ICE must make the reports public.\u00a0<\/p>\n But under Trump\u2019s second term, experts said, death reports from ICE detention have often been delayed.<\/p>\n After Lunas Campos died at East Montana, for example, ICE waited nearly a week to issue the release<\/a> claiming he died from \u201cdistress.\u201d Only after the medical examiner advised his family that it might be a homicide<\/a>, did ICE officials allege a suicide attempt<\/a>.<\/p>\n Authorities without ties to the federal government should investigate ICE deaths and conduct autopsies, said Ang\u00e9lica C\u00e9sar, a Human Rights Watch official monitoring ICE deaths in Texas.<\/p>\n Doing so \u201cwould ultimately protect both the families and the integrity of the investigative process,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n ICE lacks protocols for how and when to conduct autopsies after a detainee\u2019s death, according to a 2024 analysis<\/a> of thousands of government records and interviews obtained and conducted by the American Civil Liberties Union, Physicians for Human Rights, and American Oversight, an investigative nonprofit group.<\/p>\n The agency, for example, did not initially order an autopsy on Ronald Cruz<\/a>, a 39-year-old Honduran who died in 2018 while at the South Texas Port Isabel Detention Center. Only when his family said that they would pay for one, did ICE reveal that Cruz had died of bacterial meningitis. Whistleblowers called<\/a> his medical care \u201cgrossly negligent\u201d and experts later said Cruz could have survived with appropriate care, according to the ACLU\u2019s report<\/a>. If he had been given antibiotics or sent to the emergency room sooner, he \u201clikely\u201d would not have died,\u201d according to a doctor who specializes in correctional health and reviewed the evidence.<\/p>\n ICE at times fails to preserve evidence needed for required death investigations, said Andrew Free, a lawyer and researche<\/a>r who specializes in such detention deaths. Civil lawsuits have revealed that detention officials at times destroyed relevant video footage that would aid investigations, he said.<\/p>\n Attorneys and whistleblowers said that appeared to be the case with Gourgen Mirimanian<\/a>, a 54-year-old Armenian who died in 2018 at the Prairieland Detention Center, 44 miles south of Dallas, according to the ACLU report. Found unresponsive in his bunk, his death was ruled due to hypertensive and cardiovascular disease. But ICE officials later reported that some security footage of his last hours was hard to see clearly and other crucial video \u201cnot retained.\u201d<\/p>\n At Camp East Montana, officials there have so far refused to release video related to Lunas Campos\u2019 death, his lawyer said. <\/p>\n What medical care do ICE detainees receive?<\/p>\n Although claims of abuse and poor medical care have plagued ICE detention facilities for years, conditions for immigrants there under this administration are deadlier, according to half a dozen former officials who oversaw ICE under Trump\u2019s first administration and the Biden administration.<\/p>\n Historically, many deaths in ICE custody likely could have been avoided with better medical care, experts and advocates said, a pattern that sparks concerns given the government\u2019s skyrocketing detention.<\/p>\n The ACLU examined<\/a> the deaths of 52 people in ICE custody between 2017 and 2021 and found that 49 of them were \u201clikely preventable,\u201d most often resulting from faulty medical diagnoses by detention staff. In 40% of those deaths, ICE staff failed to provide timely care, the report found.<\/p>\n Lawyers and congressional representatives say conditions have worsened at such centers, including the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, 70 miles south of San Antonio, which drew widespread <\/a>attention after photographs<\/a> of 5-year-old Liam Conjeo Ramos went viral following his detention last month in Minneapolis. More than 1,300 parents and children are currently at that facility and at least 1,000 complaintsof poor medical care have been lodged since the administration reopened<\/a> the detention center last April, according to Tha\u00eds Rodrigues Silva-Marques, a spokesperson for the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, a San Antonio nonprofit that works in that facility. Last month, at least two cases of measles<\/a> were confirmed at the facility.<\/p>\n Among the many cases of alleged medical neglect is a 2-month-old boy detained there for three weeks who was hospitalized in the past few days after \u201cchoking on his own vomit,\u201d according <\/a>to U.S Rep. Joaquin Castro<\/a>, a San Antonio Democrat. The infant had bronchitis, he said<\/a>, and was unresponsive for hours before being discharged. Late Tuesday, he and his family were suddenly deported despite attempts by Castro and lawyers.<\/p>\n \u201cTo unnecessarily deport a sick baby and his entire family is heinous,\u201d said<\/a> Castro, who in recent weeks has escalated concerns about the nation\u2019s only facility currently holding parents with their children. He called ICE\u2019s decision \u201cmonstrous,\u201d pledging to seek details. DHS officials said on X <\/a>that the mother \u201cchose to take her child into custody with her\u201d and \u201center and remain in the country illegally.\u201d<\/p>\n Attorneys, echoing complaints in an ongoing lawsuit<\/a> seeking to prevent the Trump administration from terminating a decades-old settlement<\/a> governing the rights of children in detention, describe at Dilley impotable water, barely any schooling and detainees forced to sleep under fluorescent lights. Medical care is lacking even for those with terminal conditions such as a 6-year-old<\/a> with leukemia who was detained along with his family last year. He had little access to care, his lawyers said, before they were able to free him.<\/p>\n Brian Todd, a spokesperson for CoreCivic, the private company that runs ICE facilities in Texas including the one in Dilley, said allegations of poor medical care \u201cdo not reflect the\u202fhard work\u202f<\/a>our staff does every day to help people in our facilities get the care they need.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cComprehensive, around-the-clock care is delivered by licensed physicians, dentists, advanced practice providers, nurses, and mental health professionals,\u201d Todd added.<\/p>\n He said claims of poor drinking water at Dilley are \u201cpatently false\u201d because detainees and staff consume the same water as the community.<\/p>\n \u202fAt the Prairieland detention center outside Dallas, a New Jersey woman<\/a> who was arrested after a 2024 Columbia University Gaza protest was hospitalized<\/a> this month following a fall in the bathroom. Leqaa Kordia, 33, said in a statement through her lawyers last week that the facility\u2019s \u201cfilthy\u201d conditions made her ill and that the fall induced a seizure. Her lawyers and family did not know where she was as she remained<\/a> chained for days to the hospital bed.\u00a0<\/p>\n Detained alongside her are pregnant women and those with terminal cancer and severe disabilities, said Travis Fife, an attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project, a statewide advocacy group. \u201cOvercrowded, inhumane\u201d conditions threaten what he called a \u201ccivil rights disaster.\u201d<\/p>\n Although the ICE Health Service Corps<\/a> is responsible for detainees\u2019 medical care, it provides direct treatment at just 17 of more than 200 facilities across the country, including six <\/a>in Texas. The majority of immigrants held by ICE are in facilities where private prison companies or their contractors provide medical care at profit<\/a>.<\/p>\n During this administration, more ICE health staffers and their government liaisons have quit, citing concerns about the quality of care they are able to provide, according to NPR<\/a>.<\/p>\n Charlotte Weiss, an El Paso attorney for the Texas Civil Rights Project, said that poor medical treatment forces immigrants into choosing between grave health conditions in hopes of staying in the U.S. or giving up and returning to danger \u201cjust so they can get out.\u201d <\/p>\n Are there more detention centers coming to Texas?<\/p>\n Despite growing resistance from some state and local leaders, the administration seeks to open additional<\/a> ICE facilities in warehouses across Texas and the country to handle an exploding detainee population.<\/p>\n Several of the state\u2019s ICE centers were at or near capacity last year, according to ICE data<\/a>.<\/p>\n The government needs more detention space in part because a bottleneck of nearly 4 million immigration court cases<\/a> hamstrings the administration unless it incites or forces people to leave on their own. It has offered<\/a> $2,600 to those who voluntarily depart. After a 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling this month upheld<\/a> a Trump policy seeking to deny bonds for detained immigrants, many in Texas will remain locked up throughout their deportation proceedings, which can take years, unless they choose to return.<\/p>\n Some cities have protested ICE\u2019s expansion. Residents vehemently denounced ICE\u2019s plan to lease a warehouse in Hutchins, outside Dallas, that was slated to hold more migrants than the city\u2019s 8,000 residents. This weekend, the real estate company owning the building said<\/a> that it \u201cwill not enter\u201d into any ICE agreement.<\/p>\n The administration is also pursuing an El Paso County site expected<\/a> to hold up to 8,500 people, although city officials last week approved <\/a>a motion seeking to prevent that. At least two facilities are planned in McAllen and San Antonio, In the latter, U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales<\/a>, a Laredo Republican who represents a sliver of the city, promised <\/a>that it would bring \u201cgood paying jobs,\u201d although San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones, argued<\/a> otherwise in demanding more transparency.<\/p>\n The mounting concerns at the El Paso camp are just a fraction of what will occur as the administration multiplies its detention capacity, said Escobar, the El Paso Congress member.<\/p>\n Such an expansion would be problematic to \u201cnot just the people in custody,\u201d she said, \u201cbut to the communities that are going to have to grapple with the health risks, with the demands on their emergency services, the impact to their hospitals\u201d as a result of the increased needs.<\/p>\n \u201cRapidly proliferating the problem,\u201d Escobar added, \u201cwill be a nightmare.\u201d<\/p>\n This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune<\/a>.<\/p>\n Sign Up for SA Current newsletters.<\/a><\/p>\n Follow us:\u00a0Apple News<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Google News<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0NewsBreak<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Reddit<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Instagram<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Facebook\u00a0<\/a>| Twitter<\/a>\u00a0| Or sign up for our\u00a0RSS Feed<\/a><\/p>\n Related Stories<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\tThe baby and his family, held in the Dilley site south of San Antonio, were reportedly \u2018abandoned\u2019 at the border with the money left in their commissary account \u2014 or just $190.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"Note:](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Screen-Shot-2026-02-19-at-8.35.33-AM.png\")
Note: Congress requires ICE to report this data every two weeks. The average daily population, analyzed by researchers using federal data, captures how many people are held in each detention center in a snapshot of time. This data is recent as of Feb. 5. ICE did not respond to requests on its published data or the analysis, which is searchable by state. Some county jails hold ICE detainees in an agreement with the federal government, so the number of immigrants in those facilities are difficult to quantify.
Source: ICE, Relevant Research, a Maryland-based data analysis company, and the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonprofit that analyzes government data obtained via public records requests Credit: Texas Tribune \/ Apurva Mahajan<\/p>\n
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