THE PROBLEM WITH ICESix Deaths in Six Weeks: What to Know About ICE Detentions in Texas
Last year was the deadliest year in ICE detention in two decades. Nearly a quarter of those deaths occurred in Texas.
The 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.
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 “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.
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 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.
