ICE says a Cuban immigrant died in a suicide attempt. A witness says guards pinned and choked him

A witness told The Associated Press that Lunas Campos died after he was handcuffed, tackled by guards and placed in a chokehold until he lost consciousness. The immigrant’s family was told by the El Paso County Medical Examiner’s Office on Wednesday that a preliminary autopsy report said the death was a homicide resulting from asphyxia from chest and neck compression, according to a recording of the call reviewed by the AP.

The death and conflicting accounts have intensified scrutiny into the conditions of immigration jails at a time when the government has been rounding up immigrants in large numbers around the country and detaining them at facilities like the one in El Paso where Lunas Campos died.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is legally required to issue public notification of detainee deaths. Last week, it said Lunas Campos, a 55-year-old father of four and registered sex offender, had died at Camp East Montana, but made no mention of him being involved in an altercation with staff immediately before his death.

In response to questions from the AP, the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, on Thursday amended its account of Lunas Campos’ death, saying he tried to kill himself.

“Campos violently resisted the security staff and continued to attempt to take his life,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said. “During the ensuing struggle, Campos stopped breathing and lost consciousness.”

In an interview before DHS updated its account, detainee Santos Jesús Flores, 47, from El Salvador, said he witnessed the incident through the window of his cell in the special housing unit, where detainees are held in isolation for disciplinary infractions.

“He didn’t want to enter the cell where they were going to put him,” Flores told the AP on Thursday, speaking in Spanish from a phone in the facility. “The last thing he said was that he couldn’t breathe.”

Among the first sent to Camp Montana East

Camp Montana East is a sprawling tent facility hastily constructed in the desert on the grounds of Fort Bliss, an Army base. The AP reported in August that the $1.2 billion facility, expected to become the largest detention facility in the United States, was being built and operated by a private contractor headquartered in a single-family home in Richmond, Virginia. The company, Acquisition Logistics LLC, had no prior experience running a corrections facility.

It was not immediately clear whether the guards present when Lunas Campos died were government employees or those of the private contractor. Emails seeking comment on Thursday from Acquisition Logistics executives received no response.

Lunas Campos was among the first detainees sent to Camp Montana East, arriving in September after ICE arrested him in Rochester, New York, where he lived for more than two decades. He was legally admitted to the U.S. in 1996, part of a wave of Cuban immigrants seeking to reach Florida by boat.

ICE said he was picked up in July as part of a planned immigration enforcement operation due to criminal convictions that made him eligible for removal.

New York court records show Lunas Campos was convicted in 2003 of sexual contact with an individual under 11, a felony for which he was sentenced to one year in jail and placed on the state’s sex offender registry.

Lunas Campos was also sentenced to five years in prison and three years of supervision in 2009 after being convicted of attempting to sell a controlled substance, according to the New York corrections records. He completed the sentence in January 2017.

Lunas Campos’ adult daughter said the child sexual abuse accusation was false, made as part of a contentious custody battle.

“My father was not a child molester,” said Kary Lunas, 25. “He was a good dad. He was a human being.”

Conflicting accounts

On the day he died, according to ICE, Lunas Campos became disruptive while in line for medication and refused to return to his assigned dorm. He was then taken to the segregation block.

“While in segregation, staff observed him in distress and contacted on-site medical personnel for assistance,” the agency said in its Jan. 9 release. “Medical staff responded, initiated lifesaving measures, and requested emergency medical services.”

Lunas Campos was pronounced dead after paramedics arrived.

Flores said that account omitted key details — Lunas Campos was already handcuffed when at least five guards pinned him to the floor, and at least one squeezed his arm around the detainee's neck.

Within about five minutes, Flores said, Lunas Campos was no longer moving.

“After he stopped breathing, they removed the handcuffs,” Flores said.

Flores is not represented by a lawyer and said he has already consented to deportation to his home country. Though he acknowledged he was taking a risk by speaking to the AP, Flores said he wanted to highlight that “in this place, guards abuse people a lot.”

He said multiple detainees in the unit witnessed the altercation, and security cameras there should have captured the events. Flores also said investigators had not interviewed him.

DHS did not respond to questions about whether Lunas Campos was handcuffed when they say he attempted suicide, or exactly how he had tried to kill himself.

“ICE takes seriously the health and safety of all those detained in our custody,” McLaughlin said. “This is still an active investigation, and more details are forthcoming.”

DHS wouldn’t say whether other agencies were investigating. The El Paso medical examiner’s office confirmed Thursday that it conducted an autopsy, but declined further comment.

A final determination of homicide by the medical examiner would typically be critical in determining whether any guards are held criminally or civilly liable. When such deaths are ruled accidental or something other than homicide, they are less likely to trigger criminal investigations, while civil wrongful death lawsuits become harder to prove.

The fact that Lunas Campos died on an Army base could also limit state and local officials’ legal jurisdiction to investigate. An El Paso County District Attorney’s Office spokesperson declined to comment Thursday on whether it was involved in an investigation.

The deaths of inmates and other detainees after officers hold them face down and put pressure on their backs and necks to restrain them have been a problem in law enforcement for decades. A 2024 AP investigation documented hundreds of deaths during police encounters in which people were restrained in a prone position. Many uttered “I can’t breathe” before suffocating, according to scores of body camera and bystander videos. Authorities often attempt to shift the blame for such deaths to preexisting medical conditions or drug use.

Dr. Victor Weedn, a forensic pathologist who has studied prone restraint deaths, said the preliminary autopsy ruling of homicide indicates guards' actions caused Lunas Campos’ death, but does not mean they intended to kill. He said the medical examiner’s office could come under pressure to stop short of calling it a homicide, but will probably “stick to its guns.”

“This probably passes the ‘but for’ test. ‘But for’ the actions of the officers, he would not have died. For us, that’s generally a homicide,” he said.

‘I just want justice, and his body here’

Jeanette Pagan-Lopez, the mother of Lunas Campos’ two youngest children, said the day after he died the medical examiner’s office called to inform her that his body was at the county morgue. She immediately called ICE to find out what happened.

Pagan-Lopez, who lives in Rochester, said the assistant director of the El Paso ICE field office eventually called her back. She said the official told her the cause of death was still pending and that they were awaiting toxicology report results. He also told her the only way Lunas Campos’ body could be returned to Rochester free of charge was if she consented to his being cremated, she said.

Pagan-Lopez declined and is now seeking help from family and friends to raise the money needed to ship his body home and pay for a funeral.

After failing to get details about the circumstances surrounding his death from ICE, Pagan-Lopez said she got a call from a detainee at Camp Montana East who then put her in touch with Flores, who first told her about the altercation with guards.

Since then, she said she has repeatedly called ICE, but is no longer getting a response. Pagan-Lopez, who is a U.S. citizen, said she also twice called the FBI, where an agent took her information and then hung up.

Pagan-Lopez said she and Lunas Campos were together about 15 years before breaking up eight years ago. She described him as an attentive father who, until his detention, had worked in a minimum-wage job at a furniture store, the only employment she said he could find due to his criminal record.

She said that in the family's last phone call the week after Christmas, Lunas Campos talked to his kids about his expected deportation back to Cuba. He said he wanted them to visit the island, so that he could stay in their lives.

“He wasn’t a bad guy,” Pagan-Lopez said. “I just want justice, and his body here. That’s all I want.”

Attanasio reported from Seattle, and Foley from Iowa City.

Contact the AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/.