Havana/The family of Cuban Geraldo Lunas Campos demands more than a million dollars and blames his death in custody from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) to four agents and the companies that managed the Texas detention center. According to Washington Post The complaint accuses the guards of “killing” him and states that the staff at Camp East Montana, where he was held, were not “trained” to care for him.
The camp was hastily built last summer after the US government awarded a contract, “now worth up to $1.3 billion, to Acquisition Logistics LLC, a Virginia contractor that had never operated an ICE facility,” he posted. Los Angeles Times. According to the same medium, among the subcontractors is the security firm Akima Global Services and the doctor Loyal Source, about whom the lawsuit has been filed.
The plaintiffs indicate that in the largest detention center in the United States “the mental illness of Lunas Campos was not properly treated, which put him in danger.” Relatives affirm that the detainee “requested medical attention on several occasions” because “he suffered from bipolar disorder, anxiety and even expressed suicidal thoughts weeks before his death.”
According to the publication, “health professionals recommended a more extensive psychiatric evaluation, but the transfer never occurred.”
The lawsuit includes the autopsy, which indicated that the body had injuries to the neck, chest and knees, compatible with physical force, and that death occurred due to asphyxiation caused by compression of the torso and neck. The coroner’s conclusion was that it was “a homicide”.
“He was mistreated, beaten and strangled to death,” said Jeanette Pagan López, mother of two of Lunas Campos’ children, at the time.
In the first 500 days of Donald Trump’s second term, 52 people have died, four of them Cubans
The case of Lunas Campos is one of dozens of excesses committed in ICE detention centers. The organizations Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights showed last June that in the first 500 days of Donald Trump’s second term 52 people have diedfour of them Cubans.
Denny Adán González died last April. According to an official statement, he was found unconscious in his cell and the cause of death remains under investigation. Aled Damien Carbonell Betancourt, 27, was found on April 12 in his cell at the Miami Federal Detention Center. ICE described the 49th death in custody since Trump’s return to power as a “suicide.”
The other two cases are those of Isidro Pérez (75 years old), who died on June 26, 2025 at the HCA Kendall Hospital in Miami while he was at the Krome Detention Center awaiting deportation, and that of Lunas Campos.
Last November, Democratic Congresswoman from Texas Verónica Escobar denounced “the dangerous and inhumane conditions that migrants face at Camp East Montana,” located at the Fort Bliss Army base on the outskirts of El Paso.
A report by the Associated Press agency last March showed suicide attempts, fights and suffering inside the center. Former property manager in Columbia, Missouri, Owen Ramsingh, who stayed there for several weeks, said Camp East Montana was “1,000% worse than a prison,” where “every day felt like a week. Every week felt like a month. Every month felt like a year.”
