The report comes the same day a federal judge temporarily barred the deportation of two fellow detainees who said 55-year-old Geraldo Lunas Campos was killed.

The recent death of a detainee at an immigrant detention camp in Texas has been officially deemed a homicide, according to an autopsy report released Wednesday by the El Paso County Office of the Medical Examiner.

“Based on the investigative and examination findings, it is my opinion that the cause of death is asphyxia due to neck and torso compression,” Adam C. Gonzalez, deputy medical examiner for El Paso County, said in the report. “The manner of death is homicide.”

The finding does not imply intent to kill, but rather that the victim’s death was caused by another person, according to Lee Ann Grossberg, an independent forensic pathologist who reviewed the autopsy at the request of The Washington Post.

Geraldo Lunas Campos, a 55-year-old Cuban man who was detained at Camp East Montana in El Paso, died during an interaction with guards after being placed into solitary confinement, according to the government. A fellow detainee who said he witnessed the incident claimed Lunas Campos had been asking for his medication.

The autopsy report indicated that Lunas Campos was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and had medication for depression in his system. Asphyxia due to neck and torso compression means Lunas Campos did not get enough oxygen because of pressure on his neck and chest, Grossberg said.

The medical examiner’s findings shed new light on the mystery of Lunas Campos’s death, an event that has in recent days become the subject of conflicting explanations. They also add to growing concerns about Camp East Montana, the largest ICE detention center in the country, where three men have died in the past two months.

Following Lunas Campos’s death on Jan. 3, the Department of Homeland Security initially said “staff observed him in distress” and gave no cause of death. Then, in a recorded conversation last week that was first reported by The Washington Post, an employee of the medical examiner’s office told one of Lunas Campos’s relatives that the office was likely to list the manner of death as homicide.

After that report in The Post, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that Lunas Campos had tried to take his own life and guards were trying to save him. “Campos violently resisted the security staff and continued to attempt to take his life,” McLaughlin said. “During the ensuing struggle, Campos stopped breathing and lost consciousness.”

In response to questions about the autopsy report, McLaughlin repeated last week’s statement.

A fellow detainee, Santos Jesus Flores, said in a phone interview with The Post last week that he saw guards choking Lunas Campos and heard Lunas Campos repeatedly saying, “No puedo respirar” — Spanish for “I can’t breathe.” Medical staff tried to resuscitate him for an hour, after which they took his body away, Flores said.

“He said, ‘I cannot breathe, I cannot breathe.’ After that, we don’t hear his voice anymore, and that’s it,” Flores said.

The Trump administration has taken steps to deport Flores and one other detainee who provided an eyewitness account, both of whom have criminal convictions.

On Wednesday, a federal judge granted a request by lawyers representing Lunas Campos’s family to temporarily bar their deportation, a court filing shows. In his order, David Briones, a senior U.S. District Court judge for the Western District of Texas, said that deporting the men would make it harder to “obtain the testimony of these witnesses” given the difficulty of locating them abroad.

The judge set a hearing for Jan. 27 to determine whether the men can provide testimony.

Deaths in ICE detention centers have occurred with increasing frequency in recent months, as President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown floods these facilities with record numbers of detainees. At least 30 people died in detention last year — the highest in two decades — and Lunas Campos is one of six who died in the first two weeks of 2026 alone, according to ICE, which posts information about all detainee deaths on its website.

The agency reported that another man, Victor Manuel Diaz, died at Camp East Montana on Jan. 14, an incident it said was “a presumed suicide” but added that the official cause of death was under investigation. Diaz, a 36-year-old from Nicaragua, had been arrested by ICE just days earlier in Minneapolis as federal agents swept through in the city.

Camp East Montana is a colossal makeshift tent encampment that was built on the Mexican border last summer where migrants have reported substandard conditions and physical abuse. In September, ICE’s own inspectors said the facility failed to properly monitor and treat some detainees’ medical conditions, among dozens of other violations of federal detention standards, according to documents obtained by The Post.

At the time, inspectors said the facility had no approved security policy, which would include procedures for finding contraband that may pose a threat or controlling access to keys or equipment that could be used as weapons. Armed guards stationed along the facility’s perimeter were given instructions about the care and handling of their weapons, but the instructions did not explain which situations would justify the use of lethal force, inspectors noted, calling this “a serious vulnerability.”