EL PASO, Texas — A Nicaraguan immigrant was found dead at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Texas last week, federal officials said.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Victor Manuel Diaz appeared to have killed himself on Wednesday at the tent complex at the U.S. Army’s Fort Bliss base in El Paso, and that the federal investigation into his death continues.
ICE said Diaz, 36, had been swept up on Jan. 6 in the federal crackdown on immigration in Minnesota and sent to Texas. The agency said Diaz entered the United States in March 2024, Border Patrol officers took him into custody, and he was released on parole pending a court date.
ICE said a judge ordered Diaz to leave the U.S. after an August hearing that Diaz did not attend. The agency said Diaz received a final order for removal on Jan. 12, two days before he was found unconscious in his room.
ICE did not release other details about Diaz’s death. The agency said it notifies Congress and releases statements on its website of all in-custody deaths.
Diaz was being held at Camp Montana East, ICE said. The AP reported the death occurred at the same broadly described facility where ICE said another detainee died earlier this month as staff members tried to keep him from killing himself.
In that earlier death, a fellow detainee told the AP that at least five officers were restraining a handcuffed inmate and that at least one had an arm around the man’s neck while he was pinned to the floor. That detainee was identified as Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55.
ICE said it was still investigating Lunas Campos’s death. But the AP reported that a preliminary investigation by the El Paso County Medical Examiner’s Office found Lunas Campos died from asphyxia from chest and neck compression, and that the death would likely be classified a homicide.
If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.