(AP) – A Nicaraguan man died in an apparent suicide at a troubled Texas detention camp days after being detained by immigration agents in Minnesota, according to 911 calls and records released Wednesday.
A camp official reported that Victor Manuel Diaz, 36, was found in a room at the East Montana Camp in El Paso, Texas, on Jan. 14 after he attempted suicide, according to 911 calls obtained by The Associated Press through a public information request.
“I believe they were doing their rounds and they found his pants tied around his neck,” said the caller who identified himself as Luis Gonzalez, the health administrator.
Diaz’s death represents at least a third of the detainees at the Eastern Montana camp, which opened last year at Fort Bliss and holds 5,000 detainees in the desert near the U.S.-Mexico border. Advocates for detainees claim violence, abuse and neglect at the camps. An earlier death has been ruled a homicide.
Randall Kallinen, an attorney for the Diaz family, said they doubted the idea that Diaz’s death was a suicide because Diaz was not depressed and would have reunited with his mother, two sons and siblings in Nicaragua if he were deported.
“Even if it was suicide, did something happen to him that caused him to commit suicide?” Kalinen asked. “An investigation remains.”
ICE received a message seeking comment Wednesday.
Gonzalez did not witness Diaz’s suicide attempt. A separate report released by EMS on Wednesday said Diaz allegedly hanged himself with a bedsheet. Federal authorities have not released autopsy results but said the death was a “presumed suicide.”
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement captured Diaz on Jan. 6 as agents searched across Minneapolis for people who may have entered the country illegally. He was then sent to a sprawling tent colony in Texas.
Diaz crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in 2024, requested asylum and was released. A judge later ordered him deported after he failed to show up for an immigration hearing, according to ICE.
Relatives in Nicaragua lost contact with Diaz after he went to work at a suburban restaurant on January 6 and later learned he had been detained. On January 15, they received a call from ICE saying Diaz was dead. Carlos Morales, president of the Texas Nicaragua Community Board of Directors, said the family was in “disbelief.” Texas Nicaragua Community is a nonprofit organization that helped the Diaz family raise funds to return Diaz’s body to Nicaragua.
A coalition of groups and a Democratic congresswoman who represents El Paso are calling for the Eastern Montana encampment to be closed.
Some of the calls came after the death on Jan. 3 of 55-year-old Cuban Geraldo Lunas Campos. The medical examiner ruled it a homicide, citing the guard’s physical restraints.
A witness said the guards handcuffed Lunas Campos and pinned him to the ground, and one of them choked him until he couldn’t breathe. After Lunas Campos attempted suicide, guards intervened and tried to help him, but he refused them, ICE said. A camp official initially told police it was a suicide.
Lawyers for the family of Lunas Campos have asked a judge for an emergency order to prevent ICE from deporting detainees who witnessed the fight.
ICE, which oversees the camp, announced Diaz’s death on Jan. 18, saying security staff “found Diaz unconscious and unresponsive in his room.” The agency said he died “of a suspected suicide,” but the cause of death remains under investigation.
In addition to Lunas Campos and Diaz, ICE announced that a Guatemalan immigrant held at a camp in eastern Montana died on Dec. 3 after being transferred to an El Paso hospital for treatment. Francisco Gaspar-Andres, 48, died of suspected liver and kidney failure, the agency said.
Unlike the two previous deaths, Diaz’s body was not sent to the El Paso County Medical Examiner for an autopsy. Kalinen said an Armed Forces pathologist performed the autopsy at Fort Bliss and was told it could take months before the findings are released.
The 911 caller in the case told dispatchers that a team of doctors and nurses were working to resuscitate Diaz after he attempted suicide and that they needed an ambulance.
Paramedics found him lying on his back in a hospital bed with no heartbeat, according to the El Paso Fire Department incident report.
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Associated Press writer Michael Biesecker contributed in Washington.
