A Cuban immigrant died during an altercation with guards at a Texas immigration detention center earlier this month and the local medical examiner has indicated that his death will likely be classified as a homicide.
The federal government has provided a different account of the death of Geraldo Lunas Campos on January 3, saying that the detainee was attempting suicide and that staff had tried to save him.
A witness told The Associated Press that Lunas Campos died after being handcuffed, restrained by guards and strangled until he was unconscious. The immigrant’s family was told Wednesday by the El Paso County Medical Examiner’s Office that a preliminary autopsy report said the death was a homicide caused by asphyxiation due to chest and neck compression, according to call recordings reviewed by the AP.
The death and contradictory accounts have intensified scrutiny of conditions in immigration prisons at a time when the government is rounding up large numbers of immigrants across the country and detaining them in facilities such as the one in El Paso where Lunas Campos died.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is required by law to issue public notification of the deaths of people in custody. Last week, it said Lunas Campus, 55, a father of four and registered sex offender, had died at Camp East Montana, but made no mention of him being involved in an altercation with staff just before his death.
In response to questions from the AP, the Department of Homeland Security, which also includes ICE, on Thursday amended its account of Lunas Campos’ death, saying he had tried to kill himself.
“Campos violently resisted security personnel and continued attempting to take his life,” DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said. “During the ensuing struggle, Campos stopped breathing and lost consciousness.”
In an interview before DHS updated its account, detainee Santos Jesus Flores, 47, of El Salvador, said he witnessed the incident through the window of his cell in a special housing unit, where detainees are held in isolation for disciplinary violations.
“He did not want to enter the cell where they were going to put him,” Flores told the AP on Thursday, speaking in Spanish from a phone at the facility. “The last thing he said was he couldn’t breathe.”
One of the first people to be sent to Camp Montana East
Camp Montana East is a massive tent facility hastily built in the desert on the grounds of Army Base Fort Bliss. The AP reported in August that the $1.2 billion facility, which is expected to become the largest detention facility in the United States, was being built and operated by a private contractor headquartered in a family home in Richmond, Virginia. The company, Acquisition Logistics LLC, had no prior experience running a correctional facility.
It was not immediately clear whether the guards present at the time of Lunas Campos’ death were government employees or private contractors. There was no response to an email seeking comment Thursday from Acquisition Logistics officials.
Lunas Campos was one of the first detainees sent to Camp Montana East, arriving in September after ICE arrested him in Rochester, New York, where he had lived for more than two decades. He was legally admitted to the US in 1996, part of a wave of Cuban immigrants seeking to reach Florida by boat.
ICE said he was picked up in July as part of a planned immigration enforcement operation because of a criminal conviction that made him eligible for removal.
New York court records show Lunas Campos was convicted in 2003 of sexual contact with a person under the age of 11, a felony for which he was sentenced to a year in prison and placed on the state’s sex offender registry.
According to New York corrections records, Lunas Campos was sentenced to five years in prison and three years of supervision after pleading guilty in 2009 to attempting to sell a controlled substance. He completed his sentence in January 2017.
Lunas Campus’s adult daughter said the child sexual abuse allegations were false, part of a contentious custody battle.
Carrie Lunas, 25, said, “My father was not a child molester. He was a good father. He was a human being.”
conflicting accounts
According to ICE, on the day he died, Lunas Campos became upset while standing in line for medication and refused to return to his assigned hostel. After this he was taken to the isolation block.
“During the quarantine, staff observed him in distress and contacted medical personnel on scene for assistance,” the agency said in its Jan. 9 release. “Medical personnel responded, initiated life-saving measures and requested emergency medical services.”
Lunas Campos was pronounced dead after paramedics arrived.
Flores said the account omitted key details – Lunas Campos was already handcuffed when at least five guards wrestled him to the floor, and at least one had his hand clamped around the detainee’s neck.
Within about five minutes, Lunas Campos was no longer moving, Flores said.
“Once he stopped breathing, they removed the handcuffs,” Flores said.
Flores is not represented by a lawyer and says he has already consented to deportation to his home country. Although he acknowledged he was taking a risk by talking to the AP, Flores said he wanted to highlight that “in this place, the guards abuse people a lot.”
He said several prisoners in the unit witnessed the fight and that security cameras there should have captured the events. Flores also said that investigators had not interviewed him.
DHS did not answer questions about whether Lunas Campos was handcuffed when they say he attempted suicide, or how exactly he tried to kill himself.
“ICE takes the health and safety of all individuals detained in our custody seriously,” McLaughlin said. “This is still an active investigation, and more details will be forthcoming.”
DHS would not say whether other agencies were investigating. The El Paso medical examiner’s office confirmed Thursday that it has performed an autopsy, but declined to comment further.
The final determination of murder by the medical examiner will generally be important in determining whether a guard is held criminally or civilly liable. When such deaths are ruled accidental or something other than homicide, they are less likely to lead to a criminal investigation, while civil wrongful death lawsuits become harder to prove.
The fact that Lunas Campos died on an Army base may also limit the legal jurisdiction of state and local authorities to investigate. A spokesman for the El Paso County District Attorney’s Office declined to comment Thursday on whether it was involved in the investigation.
The deaths of prisoners and other detainees after officers held them upside down and applied pressure to their backs and necks to restrain them have been a problem in law enforcement for decades. A 2024 AP investigation documented hundreds of deaths during police encounters in which people were restrained in prone positions. Several people said, “I can’t breathe,” before being suffocated, according to multiple body cameras and bystander video. Authorities often attempt to blame such deaths on pre-existing medical conditions or drug use.
Dr. Victor Weeden, a forensic pathologist who has studied restraint deaths, said the preliminary autopsy verdict of homicide indicated that the guard’s actions caused Lunas Campos’ death, but did not mean that he intended to kill. He said the medical examiner’s office may come under pressure to stop calling it a homicide, but he would likely “stick to his guns.”
“It probably passes the ‘but for’ test. ‘But for’ the officers’ actions, he would not have died. To us, this is generally a murder,” he said.
‘I just want justice and his body here’
Jeanette Pagan-Lopez, the mother of Lunas Campos’ two youngest children, said the day after his death the medical examiner’s office called to inform her that his body was at the county morgue. She immediately called ICE to find out what happened.
Pagan-Lopez, who lives in Rochester, said the assistant director of the El Paso ICE field office eventually called her back. He said the officer told him the cause of death was still pending and they were awaiting the results of the toxicology report. They also told her that the only way Lunas Campos’ body could be returned to Rochester free of charge was if she consented to his cremation, she said.
Pagan-Lopez refused and is now asking for help from family and friends to send his body home and raise the money needed for a funeral.
After failing to receive details about the circumstances surrounding his death from ICE, Pagan-Lopez said he received a call from a detainee at Camp Montana East, who put him in touch with Flores, who first told him about the altercation with the guard.
Since then, she said she has repeatedly called ICE, but is now getting no response. Pagan-Lopez, who is a US citizen, said he also called the FBI twice, where an agent took information from him and then hung up.
Pagan-Lopez said she and Lunas Campos were together for about 15 years before they separated eight years ago. She described him as an attentive father who, until his detention, worked at a minimum-wage job in a furniture store, the only employment he could get because of his criminal record.
She said that in the family’s last phone call a week after Christmas, Lunas Campos talked to his children about his expected deportation back to Cuba. He said he wanted them to visit the island, so he could be in their lives.
“He wasn’t a bad guy,” Pagan-Lopez said. “I just want justice, and his body right here. That’s all I want.”
