U.S. immigration officials say a Cuban national held at a Texas detention facility died after an apparent suicide attempt, but information from the local medical examiner suggests the death may ultimately be classified as a homicide.
In a recorded phone call shared with The Washington Post, an employee with the El Paso County medical examiner’s office told the man’s daughter that a preliminary medical assessment found the cause of death for 55-year-old Geraldo Lunas Campos to be “asphyxia due to neck and chest compression.” The employee said that, pending toxicology results, the office planned to list the manner of death as homicide. The medical examiner’s office declined to comment publicly, citing privacy restrictions. In this context, a homicide ruling would indicate that another person’s actions contributed to the death, not necessarily that there was intent to kill.
Lunas Campos died on Jan. 3 at Camp East Montana, a large tent-based detention facility in El Paso that has faced repeated criticism over conditions and allegations of abuse. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) initially said in a statement that staff observed Lunas Campos “in distress” after he became “disruptive” while waiting for medication and was placed in segregation. A Department of Homeland Security official later said he attempted to take his own life and then “violently resisted” officers. According to DHS, staff intervened to try to save him, but he stopped breathing during the struggle. An internal ICE log references an immediate use-of-force incident but provides no further details.
A detainee housed in the segregation unit told The Post that he saw at least five guards restraining Lunas Campos and heard him repeatedly say, in Spanish, “I can’t breathe,” before he went silent. The FBI has contacted Lunas Campos’ family as part of an investigation, according to the mother of two of his children.
Lunas Campos had an extensive criminal history, including a 2003 conviction for first-degree sexual abuse of a child. He had been ordered deported decades ago but remained in the United States. His death is the second reported at Camp East Montana and comes amid a sharp increase in deaths in ICE custody—at least 30 last year and four in the first nine days of 2026—renewing scrutiny of ICE’s growing reliance on private contractors to operate large detention facilities.