Three detainees have died in 44 days, with at least six alleged suicide attempts and one death officially ruled a homicide. The Camp East Montana detention facility in El Paso, Texas, has become a stark symbol of a system in acute crisis.
TheAssociated Pressobtained recordings and data from more than 130 emergency calls made to El Paso 911 between the camp's opening and Jan. 20, 2026, nearly one call per day, revealing a portrait of medical emergencies, self-harm, assaults and despair. The calls document detainees banging their heads against walls, pregnant women in pain and at least 20 seizures, some resulting in serious head trauma.
The death of Geraldo Lunas Campos, a 55-year-old Cuban father of four, on Jan. 3, 2026, crystallised the scope of the crisis.ICE's initial press releasestated that Campos died after 'experiencing medical distress.' Days later, the agency revised this account to suggest he died during a suicide attempt.
The El Paso County Medical Examiner's autopsy report, released on Jan. 21, 2026, ruled his death a homicide, citing 'asphyxia due to neck and torso compression.' Eyewitnesses who were fellow detainees stated that guards choked Campos when he refused to enter a segregated housing unit.
Victor Manuel Diaz, a 36-year-old Nicaraguan, died at the same facility eleven days later, on Jan. 14, 2026. ICE described it as a 'presumed suicide.' His family disputed this characterisation, tellingThe Texas Tribunethrough their attorney that Diaz had shown no signs of depression during phone calls from the camp.
BREAKING NEWSICE appears to have strangled a detainee to death.An employee with El Paso County’s Medical Examiner says the death of Geraldo Lunas Campos at an ICE detention center is likely to be ruled a homicide. A fellow detainee reports witnessing guards choke Campos to…pic.twitter.com/IkDnQgtUzs
Notably, rather than releasing Diaz's body to the independent El Paso County Medical Examiner, the same office that overturned ICE's account of the Campos death, ICE directed that Diaz's autopsy be performed at a military hospital atFort Bliss. Human Rights Watch fellow Angélica César told the Texas Tribune that the move raised serious questions about investigative independence from the Department of Homeland Security.
A peer-reviewed study published inPsychiatric Servicesin December 2025 analysed ICE's own detainee death reviews from 2018 to 2025 and found that 17% of the 69 deaths it examined were suicides, all by hanging and all male. The study concluded that ICE facilities showed 'major deficiencies in mental health care,' including failures to identify suicidal ideation during intake screening, a finding that ICE's own internal auditors echoed in relation to Camp East Montana specifically.
TheAmerican Immigration Lawyers Associationhas kept a running log of ICE press releases documenting deaths across the detention system throughout 2025. The press releases, however, do not convey the conditions ofdaily life inside these facilities.
Accounts gathered by the AP from current and former detainees describe a camp of roughly 3,000 people housed in colour-coded uniforms in overcrowded soft-sided tents, where 72 people share each unit. Former detainee Owen Ramsingh, a legal permanent resident deported to the Netherlands in February 2026 after decades in the United States, told the AP that 'Every day felt like a week. Every week felt like a month. Camp East Montana was 1,000% worse than a prison.'
Source: International Business Times UK
