In a stunning display of “everything’s bigger in Texas,” our state’s ICE detention facilities have officially hit a record high for body counts. Between December and January, six people died in just six weeks—three of them at El Paso’s Camp East Montana, a charming little $1.2 billion tent city run by a Virginia company that apparently has as much experience in detention as I do in marathon running.
One particular highlight involves 55-year-old Geraldo Lunas Campos. While ICE initially whistled a tune about “medical distress” and a “suicide attempt,” the pesky medical examiner ruled it a homicide. Turns out, being physically restrained by law enforcement until you stop breathing tends to have that effect. Naturally, there have been zero criminal charges, because why let a little thing like “suffocation” ruin a perfectly good bureaucratic track record?
Conditions at these facilities are described by advocates as a “humanitarian crisis,” but DHS says that’s “categorically false.” They insist detainees get “proper meals” and medical care, even though the government conveniently stopped paying medical providers last October. If you’re a detainee needing dialysis or chemotherapy, I guess the “proper meal” is supposed to act as a placebo.
Meanwhile, the administration is looking to expand this five-star experience into warehouses in Dallas and San Antonio. Because nothing says “efficient government” like turning a Hutchins warehouse into a cage for more people than the town actually has residents. It’s the Texas way: if you can’t fix the problem, just build a bigger, deadlier tent and call it “job creation.”
Who knew that “limited government” actually meant “government with a limited interest in keeping you alive”?
https://www.texastribune.org/2026/02/19/ice-detention-deaths-texas-east-montana-dilley-campos/