Suicide Reports and Assaults Inside ICE 'Concentration Camps' Trigger Calls for Urgent Investigation

Three detainees have died in 44 days, with at least six alleged suicide attempts and one death officially ruled a homicide. The Camp East Montana detention facility in El Paso, Texas, has become a stark symbol of a system in acute crisis.

The Associated Press obtained recordings and data from more than 130 emergency calls made to El Paso 911 between the camp's opening and Jan. 20, 2026, nearly one call per day, revealing a portrait of medical emergencies, self-harm, assaults and despair. The calls document detainees banging their heads against walls, pregnant women in pain and at least 20 seizures, some resulting in serious head trauma.

Deaths, a Disputed Homicide and a Missing Autopsy

The death of Geraldo Lunas Campos, a 55-year-old Cuban father of four, on Jan. 3, 2026, crystallised the scope of the crisis. ICE's initial press release stated that Campos died after 'experiencing medical distress.' Days later, the agency revised this account to suggest he died during a suicide attempt.

The El Paso County Medical Examiner's autopsy report, released on Jan. 21, 2026, ruled his death a homicide, citing 'asphyxia due to neck and torso compression.' Eyewitnesses who were fellow detainees stated that guards choked Campos when he refused to enter a segregated housing unit.

Victor Manuel Diaz, a 36-year-old Nicaraguan, died at the same facility eleven days later, on Jan. 14, 2026. ICE described it as a 'presumed suicide.' His family disputed this characterisation, telling The Texas Tribune through their attorney that Diaz had shown no signs of depression during phone calls from the camp.

Notably, rather than releasing Diaz's body to the independent El Paso County Medical Examiner, the same office that overturned ICE's account of the Campos death, ICE directed that Diaz's autopsy be performed at a military hospital at Fort Bliss. Human Rights Watch fellow Angélica César told the Texas Tribune that the move raised serious questions about investigative independence from the Department of Homeland Security.

A peer-reviewed study published in Psychiatric Services in December 2025 analysed ICE's own detainee death reviews from 2018 to 2025 and found that 17% of the 69 deaths it examined were suicides, all by hanging and all male. The study concluded that ICE facilities showed 'major deficiencies in mental health care,' including failures to identify suicidal ideation during intake screening, a finding that ICE's own internal auditors echoed in relation to Camp East Montana specifically.

Conditions Inside Camp East Montana

The American Immigration Lawyers Association has kept a running log of ICE press releases documenting deaths across the detention system throughout 2025. The press releases, however, do not convey the conditions of daily life inside these facilities.

Accounts gathered by the AP from current and former detainees describe a camp of roughly 3,000 people housed in colour-coded uniforms in overcrowded soft-sided tents, where 72 people share each unit. Former detainee Owen Ramsingh, a legal permanent resident deported to the Netherlands in February 2026 after decades in the United States, told the AP that 'Every day felt like a week. Every week felt like a month. Camp East Montana was 1,000% worse than a prison.'

Ramsingh was detained at Chicago O'Hare airport at age 45 and cited a drug conviction from when he was 16 years old. According to ICE's own data, 80% of detainees at Camp East Montana had no criminal record. The American Immigration Council reported a 2,450% increase in the number of people with no criminal record held in ICE detention on any given day since President Trump took office. Discretionary releases fell by 87% between January and November 2025.

The Washington Post reported in September 2025 that ICE's own detention oversight unit had found conditions at Camp East Montana violated at least 60 federal detention standards within its first 50 days. The report was never made public. Unlike dozens of inspection reports published routinely on ICE's website, this one was withheld.

The £762 million ($1.2 billion) contract to build and operate Camp East Montana was awarded to Acquisition Logistics LLC, a company headquartered in a single-family home in Richmond, Virginia, with no prior experience in corrections. The company has subcontracted operational duties to other firms. Whether the guards who used force on Campos were federal employees or contractor staff remains unclear.

Congressional Demands and Systematic Obstruction

In January 2026, Senator John Hickenlooper and 21 Senate colleagues sent a formal letter to Secretary Noem and acting ICE Director Lyons demanding an immediate accounting of all deaths, changes to medical screening and suicide prevention protocols. The letter cited seven deaths in December 2025 alone and six additional fatalities in the first weeks of 2026. 'This rapidly increasing number of deaths is a clear byproduct of the Trump Administration's dangerous and poorly executed mass deportation agenda,' the senators wrote.

The administration's response has been to restrict oversight rather than enable it. ICE instituted a policy requiring members of Congress to give seven days' notice before visiting detention facilities, a policy a federal court subsequently blocked as unlawful. ICE also moved to prevent congressional visitors from bringing doctors, lawyers, or other specialist observers on inspection tours. Senator Hickenlooper and Senator Jon Ossoff launched a formal inquiry into what they characterised as unconstitutional obstruction of congressional oversight authority. The Further Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2024 explicitly requires DHS to allow unannounced congressional inspections of all detention facilities.

On Feb. 26, 2026, Representative Veronica Escobar of El Paso, joined by Representative Pramila Jayapal and 22 other members of Congress, wrote to Secretary Noem and Acting Director Lyons calling for the immediate closure of Camp East Montana. The letter cited three deaths in custody, a homicide ruling contradicting ICE's own account, documented medical neglect including diabetic detainees denied insulin and detainees restricted to two-minute phone calls to legal counsel every eight days, a direct violation of ICE's own detention standards.

A separate letter, led by Senator Alex Padilla, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee, and Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin, also demanded answers by Feb. 27, 2026. ICE had not paid third-party medical providers since October 2025, the senators' letter alleged, leading to denial of care.

The deaths at Camp East Montana remain unresolved, with investigations pending, witnesses being deported, and the administration simultaneously soliciting contracts for a new generation of mass detention facilities that are larger, more remote, and further from public view.