A 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.
Federal officials have offered a different account of how Mr. Lunas Campos died. In a Jan. 9 news release, they said he died on Jan. 3 after experiencing medical distress, but after the Washington Post article published, they described his death as a suicide.
In an emailed statement on Wednesday, a Department of Homeland Security official again said that Mr. Lunas Campos had tried to take his own life, saying he had “violently resisted the security staff” who tried to save him and that emergency workers had made attempts to resuscitate him.
The official did not respond to questions about the autopsy report.
Along with the autopsy, the El Paso County Office of the Medical Examiner released a toxicology report, which said Mr. Lunas Campos had a history of bipolar disorder and anxiety. The report identified the presence of trazadone and hydroxyzine, two prescription medications that can be used to treat depression and anxiety.
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.
According to federal officials, Mr. Lunas Campos was arrested last July in Rochester, N.Y., and was transferred to the El Paso facility in September. He had been convicted of at least 10 crimes, including criminal possession of a weapon, reckless driving and petit larceny, since he entered the United States in 1996, officials said.
Mr. Lunas Campos is one of three people who were in custody at Camp East Montana and have died since the facility opened in August on the Fort Bliss military base in El Paso. On Dec. 3, Francisco Gaspar-Andres, 48, of Guatemala, died about two weeks after he was admitted to an El Paso hospital, officials said. An autopsy report in his case says he died of complications of alcohol-related liver disease.
On Jan. 14, Victor Manuel Diaz, 36, of Nicaragua, died of a “presumed suicide,” according to federal officials, who said the official cause of death was under investigation. Mr. Diaz’s autopsy was being performed at the William Beaumont Army Medical Center, not the medical examiner’s office, according to Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for homeland security.
Pooja Salhotra covers breaking news across the United States.
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