EL PASO - Once a flashpoint in the heated debate over high immigration flows, this city is now a hub for detentions and deportations – with more mega-facilities in the works as the Trump administration tries to ramp up massive deportations.
This week, the El Paso County Medical Examiner ruled the Jan. 3 death of Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55, a Cuban immigrant at a tent camp, was a homicide, a finding bound to intensify calls for a shutdown at what's become the nation's largest immigration detention facility.
In total, in just the last six weeks, three men have died at the $1.2 billion privately operated Camp East Montana located at Fort Bliss army base. The average daily population at the end of November was nearly 2,800 people and is likely higher now. The Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, did not respond to a request for the current number of people detained at the camp. Immigrants picked up by the DHS agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, across the country are held at the tent facility pending deportation.
The medical examiner’s findings shed a broader light on issues of oversight and return a harsh focus to El Paso.
"Witnesses claim staff killed the detainee; DHS must preserve all evidence - including halting their effort to deport the witnesses,” said U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso. "I reiterate my call for Camp East Montana to be shut down and for the contract with the corporation running it to be terminated."
The federal government has consistently denied abuse allegations and says ICE is committed to ensuring all those in custody reside in a “safe, secure and humane environment.”
Testing Ground
El Paso has long served as a testing ground for everything from facial recognition biometrics to drones to license plate readers - tactics now seen throughout the country, from Los Angeles to Chicago to Minneapolis. The El Paso region, not new to the U.S. long history of deportations, was also the location of other controversial tent camps, including a notorious site that held minors. In 2018 and 2019, a migrant camp in Tornillo for children swelled to more than 2,500.
But the political theater, as locals refer to the whims of Washington, is back. Until recently, immigrant raids were rare. In recent days, however, several videos on social media platforms show ICE and U.S. Border Patrol agents picking up workers in construction sites, putting a city that’s more than 80 percent Hispanic, on edge.
Controlled explosions near Mount Cristo Rey, with its towering and iconic sculpture of Jesus Christ on the cross, have gone off as the Trump administration prepares the foundation for a new 1.3-mile wall. Despite the construction, crossings of migrants have dropped significantly.
Now a new detention center is planned in El Paso County, with funds from Trump’s tax and spending package that includes an estimated $45 billion for ICE detention centers and tens of billions more for additional law enforcement.
“What we are seeing with the system right now is truly unprecedented,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a lawyer and senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, at a recent webinar on detentions. “It's expanding more quickly. There is no sense of basic humanity of the people going through the system, and the basic underlying rules of due process are being tossed out.”
Reichlin-Melnick called the El Paso County medical examiner’s finding probably the first-ever homicide in ICE detention.
Escobar and 122 Democratic lawmakers introduced legislation last December to create enhanced oversight for detention centers and phase out private contractors over three years.
Rapid Expansion
The Department of Homeland Security confirmed plans to expand detention space across the country. “These will not be warehouses — they will be very well-structured detention facilities meeting our regular detention standards,”a DHS spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “It should not come as news that ICE will be making arrests in states across the U.S. and is actively working to expand detention space.”
An ICE spokesman also said they wouldn’t confirm specific locations, including one in Dallas County.
Detentions have reached historic highs of 70,000 at about 200 U.S. facilities, stretching from the state of Washington to California, Texas to Georgia, according to ICE data.
“There will be more deaths, there will be more harm,” said Marisa Limón Garza, executive director of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center here in El Paso. “This is not an anomaly. Unless ICE changes course, there’s more oversight, there’s more accountability and there’s more protection of people in detention.”
In Dallas County, another possible detention facility off a highway could hold nearly 10,000. The prospect has galvanized Texans there against it, too.
The Washington Post reported details in December about a draft solicitation for renovating industrial warehouses to hold up to 80,000 persons. One of them is believed to be in Hutchins, a suburb of about 8,000 persons, according to Census Bureau estimates.
“We are horrified by the fact this is going to be in our backyard,” said Rev. Eric Folkerth, a Methodist minister who leads an interfaith group defending immigrants and holding vigils at an orange-brick ICE field office in Dallas. “We are planning resistance from our churches and have spoken to other county officials who are equally disturbed.”
Folkerth said he believes the massive ICE detention center could open based on conversations his clergy group has had with government and private officials.
The site sits sandwiched by a noisy highway and a Federal Express distribution hub and budget hotels. The empty blue and white warehouse looks like the length of a large mall and advertises its size at 1 mm square feet.
Recent Deaths
Human rights organizations and lawyers in contact with people at the El Paso tent facility have been sounding the alarm for months and documented cases of medical neglect, unsanitary conditions, lack of food and abuse at the facility.
“The medical examiners report that Geraldo’s death was a homicide completely dispels the government’s claim that this was a suicide,” said Charlotte Weiss, staff attorney based in El Paso with the Texas Civil Rights Project. Weiss regularly visits people detained at Camp East Montana and says she and other partners have documented cases of “excessive use of force.”
DHS officials have said Lunas Campos tried to take his own life and "violently resisted security staff when they intervened to save him." And during the struggle, a DHS spokesperson said he stopped breathing and lost consciousness.
DHS says his death is under investigation. At the same time the federal government is trying to deport two detainees quoted in news reports saying they witnessed Lunas Campos in an altercation with staff when he died. Lawyers for the men, a Salvadoran and a Cuban, are trying to extend an injunction to keep them in this country until they can give depositions.
When ICE officials reported his death they also cited Lunas Campos' criminal record. He had been convicted of driving while intoxicated, criminal possession of a weapon, petit larceny, and other crimes.
In another death at the El Paso tent camp on Jan. 14, ICE officials reported Victor Manuel Diaz of Nicaragua, died by “presumed suicide.” The official cause of his death remains under investigation, ICE said. The man had been detained in Minneapolis, where widespread protests have been held since Renee Good, a U.S. citizen, was fatally shot by an ICE agent on Jan. 7.
A third man, Francisco Gaspar Andres from Guatemala, died in December at an El Paso hospital where he was transported for a serious medical condition.
Protests Grow
There have been multiple protests outside the detention camp in Fort Bliss since it opened in August and a vigil recently for the men who died in custody.
Jeannie Norris says it’s hard to see El Paso at the center of recent events.
“I am so shocked what’s happening in our country,” she said, one of dozens of El Pasoans at a recent vigil. “...and it’s close to home and you have a big detention center right in your hometown which is an international city, which has always loved immigrants before, and we treat them so badly, it’s heartbreaking.”
Rebecca Krasne, another El Paso resident, added, “We have to voice our condemnation of these acts and our total distrust of our government, and come together and be strong and powerful in our voice to try to do what we can to stop this madness.”
Much of the trauma for immigrant families, particularly women, is unseen, said Anthony Lazon, the founder of the social justice group Dallas For Change. “They are forcing these women to self-deport,” said Lazon, who often assists families whose loved ones are detained. “These tactics force these women into life-threatening situations where they have to fend for themselves….A lot of these people are following the legal process. Asylum is the legal process.”
As so many see video of violent arrests and the fatal death of Good in Minneapolis, polls show declining support for the crackdown.
This article was co-published with Puente News Collaborative, a bilingual nonprofit newsroom dedicated to high-quality coverage from the U.S.-Mexico border, and KTEP Public Media.
