Chuck DarwinA Cuban immigrant’s death in an El Paso detention center this month
was ruled a #homicide, according to an autopsy report released Wednesday by the county medical examiner’s office.
The detainee, #Geraldo #Lunas #Campos, 55, became unresponsive while he was physically restrained by law enforcement on Jan. 3
at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility called #Camp #East #Montana, the report said.
Emergency medical workers tried to resuscitate him, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.
The autopsy listed the cause of death as
💥“asphyxia due to neck and torso compression.”
The report also described injuries Mr. Lunas Campos had sustained to his head and neck,
including💥 burst blood vessels in the front and side of the neck,
as well as on his eyelids.
The determination by the medical examiner’s office does not necessarily indicate criminal culpability -- It is a classification of how a person died, not a legal determination of guilt.
Mr. Lunas Campos’s death has brought renewed scrutiny to the detention center this month
after The Washington Post reported the episode last week.
His family has asserted that he was killed by the facility’s guards,
citing a witness who 💥said he saw guards choking Mr. Lunas Campos to death.
The family is preparing a wrongful-death lawsuit, according to their lawyer, Will Horowitz.
“He was being abused and beaten and choked to death,”
Jeanette Pagan Lopez,
the mother of two of Mr. Lunas Campos’s children, told The New York Times last week.
On Wednesday, Ms. Pagan Lopez said she had not yet seen the autopsy report.
On Tuesday, Mr. Lunas Campos’s family
💥petitioned a federal judge to
stop the deportation of two individuals who they say
witnessed the death or the moments leading up to it.
The family said in the petition that a fellow detainee had seen
💥guards choke Mr. Lunas Campos to death,
and that another detainee had seen him struggle with the guards before he died.
Both of those detainees have since been given deportation notices.
The children of Mr. Lunas Campos asked the court to stop the deportations so the witnesses could testify in the family’s wrongful-death suit.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/21/us/el-paso-ice-detainee-homicide.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
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