A 55-year-old Cuban migrant named Geraldo Lunas Campos died while in the custody of United States (US) Immigration and Customs Enforcement at Camp East Montana in January, and now his family has filed a lawsuit against the camp’s operators and guards.
The family is demanding $1 million in damages for the guards killing the detainee.
According to KFOX14/CBS4, ICE initially said the immigrant, a convicted felon, was suffering from an undisclosed medical emergency and later changed their stance to a homicide.
The detainee death report released by ICE in February alleges that Campos died during the spontaneous use of force by staff to prevent him from harming himself.
But according to the El Paso County Medical Examiner, the arrested immigrant’s cause of death was “asphyxiation due to neck and torso compression.”
The lawsuit filed by the family on Monday alleges that the companies responsible for managing the facility failed to train and supervise their staff, resulting in Campos’ killing.
In response to the lawsuit, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has maintained that the detainee died in an attempt to take his own life as staff tried to prevent him from harming himself.
In a statement to the publication, DHS said, “ICE takes the health and safety of all detainees in our custody seriously. This remains an active investigation and more details are forthcoming.”
The contractor who ran Camp East Montana at the time of Campos’ death had not publicly commented on the allegations at the time of publication.
