A man who left Costa Rica for the United States was deported ten months later, unable to speak, move, or respond.
Randall Gamboa Esquivel departed his hometown of Pérez Zeledón in December 2024 and was detained for unlawful entry at the U.S.-Mexico border, first held at the Webb County Detention Center before being transferred to the Port Isabel Detention Center in Texas.
In September 2025, the 52-year-old was deported back to San José, Costa Rica, aboard an air ambulance in a vegetative state. Gamboa was pronounced dead five weeks later.
“Have you ever smelled a cadaver? That’s how my brother smelled when he was deported,” Greidy Mata, Gamboa’s younger sister, told the Guardian, adding that the family was still trying to make sense of how his health had deteriorated so rapidly.
According to Gamboa’s relatives, he left Costa Rica to seek work in New Jersey. He had previously lived undocumented in the United States between 2002 and 2013 and hoped to earn enough money to eventually return to Pérez Zeledón and buy a home.
Prior to his journey, relatives warned him that the United States was no longer the same, with President Donald Trump, 79, promising an immigration crackdown from the start of his second term in office.
“How is it possible that a man that left healthy, tall, chubby, robust, came back dirty, looked abandoned, with ulcers on his entire body, in a vegetative state?” Mata asked.
Gamboa’s last video call with his family took place on June 12, Mata told the outlet, sharing a recording in which he told them he loves them all “very much,” and added: “Soon I will be out of here, with faith in God, everything is going to be okay.”
According to medical records shared with the Guardian from Gamboa’s time in U.S. custody, he was transferred to Valley Baptist Medical Center, 28 miles from his detention facility, on June 23 and hospitalized with an “altered mental status.”
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin wrote in an email to the Guardian that while Gamboa was in custody, “professionals diagnosed him with unspecified psychosis and hospitalized him at Valley Baptist Hospital so he could get proper mental health and medical care,” adding that the medical assessment conducted at ICE detention facilities “is the best health care that many aliens have received in their entire lives.”
His family maintains that he had no history of mental illness.
Six days after Gamboa was hospitalized, medical records note that he was “seen resting comfortably, quietly in bed, with [an] immigration detention officer at bedside, and in no acute distress.”
Yet, on July 7, the records indicate he was diagnosed with at least 10 conditions, including sepsis—a life-threatening condition in which the body overreacts to an infection, potentially causing organ damage—as a primary diagnosis.
Less than a month later, a doctor described Gamboa as unable to “move or respond” and in a “catatonic state.”
“I can’t sleep thinking what would’ve happened if we knew he was sick? Why did they keep this information from us? We found out where he was in August,” Mata recalled, highlighting that the first time she heard about her brother’s condition was from Cathy Potter, a lawyer the family had tasked with finding Gamboa. Potter informed them he was in a “vegetative” state and continued with removal proceedings so Gamboa could return to his home country.
“It was nice seeing and touching him again because it gave us hope that he could recover,” Mata said about her brother’s eventual return to Costa Rica in September, while also noting that when she first saw him, she “thought he had been tortured in some type of way because he was ill-nourished, had skin ulcers and dried blood on his body and had a strong odor.”
The Daily Beast has contacted DHS and ICE for comment regarding Gamboa’s condition upon leaving U.S. custody.
In 2025, 32 people died in ICE custody as the Trump administration continued its immigration crackdown, making it the deadliest year on record since 2004.
Statements by Trump and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, 54, declared that the focus of the crackdown would be on the “worst of the worst” criminals, but reports show that roughly a third of those arrested nationwide had no criminal convictions.
Following the shooting of 37‑year‑old mother of three Renee Nicole Good by an ICE officer in Minneapolis, more than 1,000 events were planned for the weekend in over 500 cities across all 50 states plus Washington, D.C., as part of the ICE Out for Good Weekend of Action.
“At times this all seems like a horror story or a lie,” Gamboa’s sister told the Guardian about her brother’s death, which remains under investigation by Costa Rican authorities.
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