Last week, right around the time when pretty much all of the conversation about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was understandably focused on the shooting death of U.S. citizen and Minneapolis resident Renee Nicole Good, the agency shared a press release on its website about the death of a migrant it had held in detention in the state of Texas. Geraldo Lunas Campos, a 55-year-old convicted felon from Cuba, had died on Jan. 3 in ICE custody at Camp East Montana, a sprawling makeshift tent encampment at Fort Bliss, located in El Paso on the U.S.-Mexico border. To hear ICE tell it, the death was a mystery: “Earlier that day, Lunas became disruptive while in line for medication and refused to return to his assigned dorm,” which caused guards to place him “in segregation.” While in segregation, “staff observed him in distress and contact on-site medical personnel for assistance.” He was pronounced dead by EMS. Little fanfare was given; the ICE press release goes out of its way to then list all of Campos’ many crimes and convictions for the sake of dehumanizing. Just another death to add to the ledger.
Except it seems there’s more to this particular death in ICE custody, according to both witnesses and the medical examiner who handled the body. A fellow detained migrant at the camp, speaking to the Washington Post, alleges that a group of at least five guards fought with, restrained and choked Geraldo Lunas Campos while he begged them to stop. Employees of the El Paso County Office of the Medical Examiner, meanwhile, told the daughter of Lunas Campos this week that, dependent upon the final results of a toxicology report, the death would be classified as a homicide. In a recording of the employee shared with the Post, they state that the medical examiner “is listing the preliminary cause of death as asphyxia due to neck and chest compression. Our doctor is believing that we’re going to be listing the manner of death as homicide.”
In other words, the medical examiner of El Paso County is effectively alleging that Geraldo Lunas Campos was murdered by ICE, although of course they won’t state that in literal terms. Representatives for the medical examiner’s office declined to comment to the Post, and new comments from DHS spokesperson and professional death-justifier Tricia McLaughlin have just arrived, claiming that Campos was in fact in the process of trying to commit suicide in some way. Notably, this story has emerged only after The Washington Post published its initial reporting, and there’s no reference to any attempted suicide in DHS’s original press release on the death, which says that “his cause of death is under investigation.” Will they now modify it retroactively, to cover their tracks?
“Campos violently resisted the security staff and continued to attempt to take his life,” said McLaughlin in a bizarre statement. “During the ensuing struggle, Campos stopped breathing and lost consciousness. Medical staff was immediately called and responded. After repeated attempts to resuscitate him, EMTs declared him deceased on the scene.” So the official government account is that this 55-year-old father of multiple children, after spending months languishing at Camp East Montana without any movement on his case, decided to end things by choking himself to death while staff attempted to stop him from doing so? That’s the story they’re going with?
🧵Another murder on Trump’s hands.
The cause of death was asphyxia due to neck and chest compression.
They literally choked this Cuban man to death.
— Denise Wheeler (@denisedwheeler.bsky.social) Jan 15, 2026 at 9:39 PM
Shockingly, that’s not what the eyewitness to the incident describes. In an incredible bit of testimony, notable especially for the fact that it’s on the record, a detainee at Camp East Montana named Santos Jesus Flores told the Post that he witnessed at least five guards fighting with Geraldo Lunas Campos after he refused to enter the segregation unit, saying that he didn’t have access to his medication. Flores specifically goes on to say that he say the guards choking Campos and audibly heard him repeating “no puedo respirar,” or “I can’t breathe.”
“He said ‘I cannot breathe, I cannot breathe,'” Flores told the paper. “After that, we didn’t hear his voice anymore, and that’s it.” This is a frankly incredible statement to get on the record from a detainee at the same facility, given that he could and almost certainly will be punished by his handlers for daring to speak to the media and offer up an account of what amounts to murder at the hands of ICE.
The facility in question, meanwhile, has been plagued by disturbing reports and violations of federal standards, according to ICE’s own inspectors. Housing migrants before it was even finished with construction, Camp East Montana was found by its inspectors to have “failed to properly monitor and treat some detainees’ medical conditions, lacked basic procedures for keeping guards and detainees safe and for weeks did not provide many of them a way to contact lawyers, learn about their cases or file complaints.” The camp at Fort Bliss is just one of 10 or more such detention facilities the Trump administration has built or is building on U.S. military bases, intended to be used for short-term incarceration and processing, “for periods of approximately two weeks or less.” It’s not clear how long Geraldo Lunas Campos had physically been at Camp East Montana, but he’d been in ICE custody ever since being arrested in July–more than 6 months. The ACLU has claimed that other Cuban migrants at the same compound were beaten for refusing deportation to Mexico.
The death of Geraldo Lunas Campos was already the fourth death of a detainee in ICE custody in 2026. Last year, at least 30 reported people died in detention, which was the highest figure in two decades. And that doesn’t even include cases like that of Mexican national Vicente Ventura Aguilar, who eyewitnesses say was arrested by ICE in October and suffered a medical episode during custody, but then seemingly vanished off the face of the Earth. Ventura Aguilar has never reappeared, and DHS’s official stance is that he was never in their system and thus never taken into custody, despite multiple fellow detainees stating that he was there. It begs the question: What is the true number of migrants and undocumented immigrants who have died while under the supposed care of ICE?
If Campos’ death causes the media firestorm that it really SHOULD cause, the conversation will no doubt pivot to Campos’ admittedly terrible rap sheet of crimes and convictions, which included everything from larceny and reckless driving to “sexual contact with a child under 11” in 2003. Suffice to say, we are almost certainly not talking about a good individual here. But it should go without saying that even a repeat offender has the right to not be choked to death by immigration agents, under the law.
Be ready for the Trump admin to highlight this guy’s lengthy criminal record to eliminate any sympathy for him, even though none of that justifies being choked to death by guards at a detention center.
— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social) Jan 15, 2026 at 6:07 PM
“Be ready for the Trump admin to highlight this guy’s lengthy criminal record to eliminate any sympathy for him, even though none of that justifies being choked to death by guards at a detention center,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, espousing a similar sentiment. The law is the law: As a nation we cannot decide not to be incensed by this kind of violence just because it’s being directed at a person with a vast criminal history.
Jeanette Pagan Lopez, the mother of two children fathered by Geraldo Lunas Campos, told The Washington Post that she had been contact by agents from the (Trump controlled) FBI, who said they were conducting an investigation into Campos’ death. There’s no doubt in her mind, however, what happened to him.
“I know it’s a homicide,” she said. “The people that physically harmed him should be held accountable.”
