Calls grow to shut down troubled ICE detention center after third death in 2 months
Officials in both Texas and Minnesota are calling for accountability and a full investigation into conditions at Camp East Montana, the sprawling detention complex at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, following the third reported death at the facility in less than two months.
Victor Manuel Diaz, 36, was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Minneapolis, where ICE has been carrying out violent immigration arrests, cracking down on dissent, and where one officer fatally shot a legal observer earlier this month.
He was one of roughly 2,903 detainees being held at Camp East Montana at Fort Bliss US Army base, one of the largest ICE detention centers in the country, on January 14 when contract security workers found him “unconscious and unresponsive” in his cell.
He was later pronounced dead and ICE released a statement saying he had died of “presumed suicide,” but officials arre still investigating his cause of death.
Diaz’s death comes days after it was reported that a medical examiner in Texas was planning to classify another death reported at Camp East Montana—that of Geraldo Lunas Campos—as a homicide.
A doctor said Lunas Campos’ preliminary cause of death in early January was “asphyxia due to neck and chest compression.” An eyewitness said he had seen several guards in a struggle with the 55-year-old Cuban immigrant and then saw guards choking Lunas Campos.
A month prior of Lunas Campos’ death, 49-year-old Guatemalan immigrant Francisco Gaspar-Andres died at a nearby hospital; he was a detainee at Camp East Montana. ICE said medical staff attributed his death to “natural liver and kidney failure.”
Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan called for a “complete and transparent investigation” into what happened to Diaz after his death was announced Sunday.
“We deserve answers,” said Flanagan.
US Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), who last year expressed concern about the US government’s deal with a small private business, Acquisition Logistics LLC, to run Camp East Montana, said the detention center “must be shut down immediately,” warning that “two deaths in one month means conditions are worsening.”
After the administration awarded a $1.2 billion contract to Acquisition Logistics to build and operate the camp, lawmakers and legal experts raised questions about the decision, considering the small company had no listed experience running detention centers, its headquarters was listed as a Virginia residential address, and the president and CEO of the company did not respond to media inquiries.
“It’s far too easy for standards to slip,” Escobar told PBS Newshour after touring the facility. “Private facilities far too frequently operate with a profit margin in mind as opposed to a governmental facility.”
In September, ICE’s own inspectors found at least 60 violations of federal standards, with employees failing to treat and monitor detainees’ medical conditions and the center lacking safety procedures and methods for detainees to contact their lawyers.
Across all of ICE’s detention facilities, 2025 was the deadliest year for immigrant detainees in more than two decades, with 32 people dying in the agency’s centers.
After Diaz’s death was reported Sunday, former National Nurses United communications adviser Charles Idelson said that “ICE detention centers are functioning like death camps.”