Geraldo Lunas Campos died at East Camp Montana on Jan. 3, 2026. A 55-year-old Cuban immigrant, he was in detention at the facility for a month by the time of the incident involving a bedsheet and a door handle. The official cause of death was ruled a homicide, but the path to his death was paved by a series of systemic failures that left a man in acute mental distress without adequate care. His story, detailed in a 300-page medical examiner’s investigative report reviewed by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, exposes the fragile intersection of immigration policy, mental health care, and institutional neglect.
The facility itself was still relatively new and had been opened as part of the Trump administration’s plans to house and quickly deport thousands of immigrants at a time. By the time of his death, the camp had become a microcosm of the broader crisis in immigration detention: a system designed for speed, not safety, where mental health needs were repeatedly ignored.
“He Was a Person Like Anyone Else”
Lunas Campos had a documented history of mental illness, including being previously institutionalized in New York. Yet, according to internal records, staff at Camp East Montana failed to prioritize his care. He complained at least eight times to staff about skipped or late doses of antipsychotic medication to treat his depression, anxiety, and hallucinations. On one occasion, he was seen banging his head against a wall after he couldn’t afford to pay the charges to talk with his children in New York. Staff simply noted that they spoke with him about “not hitting his head against the wall bc he must take care of his brain and his eyes.”
His incident in early October 2025—a noose tied to a door handle—was dismissed as a “suicidal gesture made to force security staff to release him” from the isolation room. Medical notes from the time stated that hospitalization was “not clinically indicated at this time based on assessed risk and protective factors.” Lunas Campos died in detention nearly three months later, after an altercation with guards over his medication. His children, who filed a lawsuit against the companies running the facility at the time of his death, argue that his death was preventable. “They want people to know that he was a person like anyone else and that he didn’t need to die,” said attorney Will Horowitz, who represents them.
The System Designed for Speed, Not Safety
Camp East Montana was conceived as a model for rapid deportation, with capacity to hold up to 10,000 unauthorized immigrants at a time. Yet its design and operations left little room for addressing mental health crises. The facility’s segregation units were used repeatedly on detainees like Lunas Campos, who was placed in segregation cells, separate from the rest of the camp population, which had little more than a bed in them. Studies show that prolonged isolation increases the risk of self-harm and suicide, a fact the camp’s staff seemingly ignored.
“The facility was never set up to house detainees struggling with serious mental health conditions,” a DHS official and a medical provider who worked there told ProPublica and the Tribune. “They just didn’t do it.” The official pointed to a lack of suicide-proof rooms, inadequate staffing, and a culture that prioritized efficiency over care. “There was no lack of money or space,” they added. “They just didn’t do it.”
Detainees at Camp East Montana reported squalid conditions, including sewage at times spilling into their eating areas and outbreaks of measles or tuberculosis. A report released by the Government Accountability Office found millions of dollars had been wasted, pointed to gaps in medical care and noted unsanitary conditions at the El Paso facility. The report also highlighted a critical flaw: in October, ICE officials raised concerns with the contractors running the facility about the lack of windows on some doors in medical holding rooms, which prevented staff from easily seeing what was happening inside.
“It’s Civil Detention”
Horowitz, the attorney for Lunas Campos’s children, emphasized that detainees are not incarcerated for crimes. “They’re not in detention because they’ve committed a crime,” he said. Yet the treatment they receive often mirrors that of criminal inmates. Lunas Campos’s case is not unique. Out of 53 deaths in ICE custody since Trump returned to the White House, at least 10 have been reported as presumed suicides.
