Geraldo Lunas Campos died at East Camp Montana on Jan. 3, 2026. The medical examiner’s investigative report described guards seeing a detainee with a bedsheet fashioned into a noose, tied to a door handle, in early October. The same records also detail how staff repeatedly recorded his frustration about delayed or skipped antipsychotic medication while his mental illness escalated into self-harm and psychiatric emergencies.

In the months leading up to the death, Campos, a 55-year-old Cuban immigrant detained at Camp East Montana in El Paso, reported serious problems with his care almost immediately after admission. According to the report reviewed by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, he had a history of mental illness and had been previously institutionalized in New York. The notes include at least eight complaints about skipped or late doses of antipsychotic drugs meant to treat his depression, anxiety and hallucinations. A Sept. 9 entry from medical staff states that he “expressed frustration regarding his medication dosage.” And when his crisis turned physical, staff sometimes responded with notes that minimized what happened rather than escalating treatment.

That pattern is at the center of ProPublica and The Texas Tribune’s reporting, which is based on the investigative report and records including documents and images reviewed by the outlets. The report provides a rare, disturbing look at how immigration detention facilities, erected rapidly with limited oversight, manage detainees with serious mental health needs. Campos’s medical notes capture moments of exasperation that led to self-harm: he banged his head against a wall after he could not afford to pay charges to talk with his children in New York, leaving him with a black eye. In response, staff recorded that they spoke with him about not hitting his head against the wall and emphasized “he must take care of his brain and his eyes.”

The bedsheet-and-doorknob incident came in early October. A mental health provider eventually coaxed Campos to untie it. Notes detailing the incident stated that Campos affirmed he wasn’t suicidal, and the notes dismissed the act as a “suicidal gesture made to force security staff to release him” from an isolation room where he had been segregated from the rest of the detainees. Hospitalization was described as “not clinically indicated at this time based on assessed risk and protective factors.” Yet medical staff notes from October also cited suicidal ideation and behavior, attributing it to attempts to be released. In other words: the same record says suicide risk was present enough to log and discuss, while also characterizing the behavior as instrumental and not requiring the level of escalation that the moment plainly demanded.

Campos died nearly three months later after an altercation with guards over his medication. The Trump administration initially claimed he experienced medical distress, but a coroner later ruled his death a homicide. Conflicting accounts have drawn significant media attention and rallied advocacy groups that allege dangerous conditions in federal detention facilities. But the reporting focus, based on what was in the report before his death, is simpler and harder: the detainee asked for help, and the facility staff failed to adequately respond.

On Monday, Campos’s three children sued the companies running the facility at the time of his death. The lawsuit alleges that guards killed him and argues negligence, including missed medication doses and improper use of force and restraint. ProPublica and The Texas Tribune also reviewed more than 160 emergency calls, along with records and interviews with staff and government officials familiar with the detention center. Those materials, the outlets report, point to additional medical and mental health emergencies beyond Campos’s case, as well as staff indicating they felt ill-equipped to respond. The coverage also flags structural conditions that can worsen despair for people with severe mental illness, including detainees’ limited access to recreational activities and time outside.

The legal and regulatory framing is crucial. A lawyer representing the adult children, Will Horowitz, is quoted saying, “It’s civil detention,” and that “They're not in detention because they've committed a crime.” In the reporting, the White House declined to comment. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to requests for an interview and did not answer written questions. The administration has previously dismissed detainee accounts about inadequate medical care and poor conditions at Camp East Montana and other detention centers as “false” and called them “fearmongering clickbait.” After Campos’s death, DHS officials in a report said he received regular medical and psychiatric evaluations, with staff adjusting his medication as needed, and they contended he was monitored for suicidal ideation. The record reviewed by the medical examiner reportedly included a period when facility staff checked on him every 15 minutes following his suicide attempt, as required by the federal government. Yet the investigative report also highlighted multiple breakdowns in care.

Dr. Sanjay Basu, an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, is quoted in the reporting describing Campos’s case as a model of how such moments compound, creating crisis after crisis with dire outcomes. The quote is cut off in the provided text, but the thrust is clear: the chart documented escalating agitation, self-harm, pressured speech, and repeated confrontations with staff over medication. The takeaway for decision-makers inside any system handling high-risk people is brutal. When a facility is built for speed and throughput, the incentives can quietly drift toward managing incidents rather than preventing them, especially in mental health emergencies where time, expertise, and appropriate medication adjustments are not “nice to have,” they are the difference between de-escalation and catastrophe.