*Protesters opposing ICE deportations at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, on Aug. 17, 2025. Photo by Reuters/Paul Ratje.*

It’s been four months since Geraldo Lunas Campos was killed while in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody at the notorious detention camp at Fort Bliss, a US military base in El Paso, Texas.

After the Cuban immigrant’s death, the Trump administration quickly started covering it up, claiming that Lunas Campos died during a suicide attempt as staffers rushed to save his life. But in late January, the El Paso County medical examiner’s office ruled his death a homicide caused by asphyxia – and witnesses at the camp began relaying their accounts of a handcuffed man repeatedly saying “I can’t breathe” in Spanish, while being held down by multiple guards.

Today, Zeteo is publishing the account of one of those witnesses, a young man who is still being detained by the Donald Trump-era ICE. Via his attorney, he has given us permission to share his story and other details of his life. Due to safety and privacy concerns, Zeteo has agreed to refer to this detainee using a pseudonym: “Texas.”

The following is based on a transcript of a conversation he had in recent months with his immigration lawyer.

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In the document, Texas describes hearing the sounds of Lunas Campos apparently getting choked to death after being denied his medication; Texas also recounts a threat an officer made against him, if he or other detainees continued to talk about what happened that day. Texas is an immigrant from Guatemala who had been living and working in the Cincinnati metropolitan area. His lawyer Carolyn Marks, who is based in Ohio, has represented him since he was a minor. He has been in ICE custody for months, following a stint in a Kentucky jail after he was arrested for driving under the influence last year; there were no injuries or damage, per Marks.

“There was a homicide where the officers killed a Cuban man. It was on the news, too,” Texas tells his lawyer, per the transcript. (It is unclear whether it was ICE staff or private contractors who held down Lunas Campos.) “I was there and I was trying to look through the window to see what was happening. The Cuban man was only asking for [his] medication; he said he wanted… medication they weren’t giving him. He was insisting on the medication, and they told him if he didn’t shut up they were going to tie him up. He said, ‘I don’t care if you tie me up, you have to give me my medication.’”

According to Texas, there were roughly 10 detainees, including himself, in “the punishment room,” and they were listening through the wall to “everything that was happening” during the moment of the killing. This witness recalls that Lunas Campos “didn’t calm down,” and continued asking, again and again, for the medication.

When Lunas Campos refused to stop asking for it, “the officers entered, grabbed him,” Texas says, “and the last thing we could hear him say was: ‘They are choking me, they are choking me.’”

‘They Are Choking Me’: Witness Describes ICE…

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