They blame four agents and the companies that ran Camp East Montana
14ymedio/EFE, Madrid, July 7, 2026 / The family of Cuban national Geraldo Lunas Campos is demanding more than one million dollars and blames four agents and the companies that managed the Texas detention center for his death while in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). According to The Washington Post, the lawsuit accuses the guards of “killing him” and claims that the staff at Camp East Montana, where he was being held, were not “trained” to care for him.
The camp was hastily constructed last summer after the U.S. 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,” the Los Angeles Times reported. According to the same media, the subcontractors included security firm Akima Global Services and medical provider Loyal Source, both of which are the subject of a lawsuit.
The plaintiffs allege that Lunas Campos’s mental illness was not properly treated at the largest detention center in the US, endangering his life. His family claims that he “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 broader psychiatric evaluation, but the transfer never happened.”
The lawsuit includes the autopsy report, which indicated that the body showed injuries to the neck, chest, and knees, consistent with physical force, and that death was caused by asphyxiation due to compression of the torso and neck. The coroner concluded that it was a homicide.
“He was mistreated, beaten and strangled to death,” said Jeanette Pagan López, mother of two of Lunas Campos’ children.
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 abuses committed in ICE detention centers. Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights revealed last June that in the first 500 days of Donald Trump’s second term 52 people have died, four 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 classified the death as a suicide, the 49th recorded in custody since Trump’s return to power.
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 in the Krome Detention Center awaiting deportation, and that of Lunas Campos.
Last November, Democratic Congresswoman Veronica Escobar of Texas denounced “the dangerous and inhumane conditions faced by migrants at Camp East Montana,” located at the Fort Bliss Army base outside of El Paso.
A report by the Associated Press last March exposed the suicide attempts, fights, and suffering inside the center. Owen Ramsingh, a former property manager in Columbia, Missouri, who spent several weeks there, said that 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.”
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