Guards at Camp East Montana, an immigration detention center in El Paso, Texas, observed detainee Geraldo Lunas Campos with a bedsheet tied around his neck and the door handle, a setup that would tighten and strangle him if the door was opened. Campos, a 55-year-old Cuban immigrant with a history of mental illness and prior institutionalization in New York, had been detained for about a month when this occurred.

According to a nearly 300-page unpublished medical examiner’s investigative report reviewed by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, Campos expressed frustration about his medical care almost immediately after admission. Despite federal requirements for frequent monitoring, investigative records show staff checked on him every 15 minutes following a suicide attempt.

Campos was convicted in 2003 for sexual contact with a child under 11 and sentenced to a year in jail, as reported by The Associated Press. His children declined to comment on his criminal history or the care failures but, through Horowitz, expressed that “he was a person like anyone else and that he didn’t need to die.”

The administration has dismissed detainee complaints about inadequate medical care and poor conditions at Camp East Montana and other centers as “false” and “fearmongering clickbait,” asserting that many immigrants receive the best medical care of their lives while detained.

At the time of Campos’ death, the typical detainee had spent 38 days in the facility, based on a ProPublica analysis of government data from the Deportation Data Project.

This investigation underscores ongoing concerns about mental health care in immigration detention facilities and the tragic consequences of systemic failures.

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