An aerial view of the East Montana Detention Facility at Fort Bliss on the outskirts of El Paso on Sept. 7, 2025. Paul Ratje/For The Texas TribuneThe 911 call reported an apparent suicide. A 55-year-old Cuban “tried to hang himself,” a federal contractor alerted emergency responders last month from a sprawling El Paso immigrant detention center. Article continues below this adBy 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 “medical distress.” But the medical examiner ruled his death a homicide — he was suffocated. The autopsy found that Lunas Campos became “unresponsive while being physically restrained by law enforcement.”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 ICE detention sites in Texas. In the span of just six weeks between December and January, six people died while detained by ICE in Texas — three of them at Camp East Montana. The deadly period began with a 48-year-old Guatemalan, Francisco Gaspar-Andres, who ICE said died on Dec. 3 of liver and kidney failure after being hospitalized for more than two weeks following detention. Article continues below this adDetention 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 due to the administration’s restrictions. Federal data shows that most current ICE detainees are not accused of crimes beyond civil immigration offenses. The expansion of ICE detention is “coupled with a dissolution of oversight, a reduction in detention standards, and draconian restrictions on releases,” said Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former senior ICE official during the last three administrations. “That appears destined to lead to more deaths, medical issues and trauma for detainees.”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’s deaths occurred in Texas. Scott Shuchart, a former head of policy at ICE under Biden and senior adviser under Trump’s first term to DHS’ Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, said the agency “struggled to ensure adequate medical care” when its detainee population was 35,000. Now it is more than doubling that number.Article continues below this adThe government last October 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 ICE documents first reported by Popular Information. Spokespeople for the Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not respond to detailed questions.Texas is the last stop for most immigrants caught in the administration’s dragnet, with more than 18,700 people detained in the state’s ICE facilities as of February the nation’s highest share, according 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 nonprofit that tracks them. And a significant percentage of growing unlawful detention cases filed in federal courts stem from Texas. The state is the “blueprint and the epicenter of the country’s immigration enforcement system, acting as the deportation funnel,” said Kristin Etter, director of policy and legal services at the statewide advocacy group Texas Immigration Law Council, “Texas is where immigration enforcement begins, where it ends, and sometimes, where it does both.”Article continues below this adWhat’s happening at Camp East Montana?The massive East Montana tent camp is currently the country’s largest ICE detention center, holding more than 3,000 men and women on a military base that’s seen as a model for what the administration plans to build.Constructed in a record two months last summer after the government granted a $1.2 billion contract to Acquisition Logistics, a small Virginia corporation with no listed experience 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 “unfolding humanitarian crisis.” More than 45 people detained there alleged abuse and serious injuries to attorneys, according to a letter 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 “grabbed my testicles and firmly crushed them.” Article continues below this adICE’s own inspectors found at least 60 violations at the facility shortly after it opened, the Washington Post first reported 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 that “any claim that there are ‘inhumane’ conditions at ICE detention centers are categorically false.” She said detainees are provided “proper meals,” medical treatment and clean clothing. 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 under federal regulations. Contractors were also provided only 40 hours of training, a fraction of at least 42 days typically required of regular ICE agents, according to those officials who were not authorized to speak publicly.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. 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 “deteriorating.”Article continues below this adAfter tuberculosis and COVID-19 cases, both highly infectious contagions, were confirmed there, Escobar said that employees told her not to enter a certain area because detainees had yet to be tested. Few people wore masks.“All it takes is one major public health issue where there’s 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,” Escobar said in an interview. “Americans 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.”What happened to Lunas Campos?Despite the crescendo of complaints at East Montana, none have resonated publicly as much as the death of Lunas Campos.Article continues below this adSix 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. After Lunas Campos was dragged in shackles to an isolation unit, detainees recalled “what sounded like the slamming of a person’s body against the floor or a wall.” They said they heard him gasp that he could no longer breathe. Then, “silence.” Chris Benoit, a lawyer for his children suing the government, said they “want to establish the truth about what the guards did to their father and demand accountability for his death.”Local and federal prosecutors have yet to say whether they would seek criminal charges following the medical examiner’s ruling that the death of Lunas Campos, who had long–standing 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. Article continues below this adThe federal government tried to deport detainees who witnessed Lunas Campos’ last moments. A federal judge in Texas blocked that attempt until after they gave their testimony last month. Benoit, a lawyer in that civil case, said that the whereabouts of the six witnesses are currently unclear.In late February, ICE quietly updated its cause of death for Lunas Campos in public reports mandated by the government. His death, federal investigators wrote, was the result of the staff’s “spontaneous use of force” to prevent the father from “harming himself.”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. Fatalities in ICE custody are typically the result of poor medical care or suicides, said Shuchart, the former Trump oversight official. Article continues below this ad“Deaths from staff violence are another level,” he said, calling them “preventable, and the result of training and supervision failures.”What about the other ICE detention deaths?Eleven days after Lunas Campos died, 36-year-old Victor Manuel Diaz marked the third fatality in six weeks at the El Paso tent camp. The 911 call was similar: “We got a situation here,” a contractor told emergency responders. “They found someone who tried to commit suicide.” Guards, he added, found the Nicaraguan man with pants tied around his neck. Article continues below this adUnlike Lunas Campos, Diaz’s body was sent to a U.S. Army hospital rather than the local medical examiner, where a military spokesperson said that the agency would not make his autopsy public.His family does not believe his death was a suicide, according to their attorney Randall Kallinen. Of the nine people who died in Texas ICE facilities since Trump’s 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.Tien Xuan Phan, 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. Article continues below this adEight months later, the Bexar County District Attorney’s office declined to release Xuan Phan’s autopsy, citing a “pending” federal investigation. What is supposed to happen if someone dies in ICE custody?Congress imposed strict rules on how deaths in ICE custody should be reported, which include publicly posting “relevant details” within two business days and requiring ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility to investigate each death and provide a report to senior management. Within 90 days, ICE must make the reports public. But under Trump’s second term, experts said, death reports from ICE detention have often been delayed.Article continues below this adAfter Lunas Campos died at East Montana, for example, ICE waited nearly a week to issue the release claiming he died from “distress.” Only after the medical examiner advised his family that it might be a homicide, did ICE officials allege a suicide attempt. Later, they reversed course concluding his death was the result of force.Authorities without ties to the federal government should investigate ICE deaths and conduct autopsies, said Angélica César, a Human Rights Watch official monitoring ICE deaths in Texas.Doing so “would ultimately protect both the families and the integrity of the investigative process,” she said.ICE lacks protocols for how and when to conduct autopsies after a detainee’s death, according to a 2024 analysis 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.Article continues below this adThe agency, for example, did not initially order an autopsy on Ronald Cruz, 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 his medical care “grossly negligent” and experts later said Cruz could have survived with appropriate care, according to the ACLU’s report. If he had been given antibiotics or sent to the emergency room sooner, he “likely” would not have died,” according to a doctor who specializes in correctional health and reviewed the evidence.ICE at times fails to preserve evidence needed for required death investigations, said Andrew Free, a lawyer and researcher 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.Attorneys and whistleblowers said that appeared to be the case with Gourgen Mirimanian, 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 “not retained.”At Camp East Montana, officials there have so far refused to release video related to Lunas Campos’ death, his lawyer said.Article continues below this adWhat medical care do ICE detainees receive?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’s first administration and the Biden administration.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’s skyrocketing detention.The ACLU examined the deaths of 52 people in ICE custody between 2017 and 2021 and found that 49 of them were “likely preventable,” most often resulting from faulty medical diagnoses by detention