Nicaraguan man’s death at Texas camp reported as a suicide: 911 records

By RYAN J. FOLEY, Associated Press

EDITOR’S NOTE — This story includes discussion of suicide. 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.

A Nicaraguan man who died at a troubled Texas detention camp days after he was detained by immigration agents in Minnesota appeared to have died by suicide, according to a 911 call and records released Wednesday.

Victor Manuel Diaz, 36, was found by guards on Jan. 14 in a room at Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas, after he tried to die by suicide, a camp official reported on a 911 call obtained by The Associated Press through a public information request.

“They were doing rounds and they just found him with his pants tied up to his neck, I believe,” said the caller, who identified himself as a health administrator named Luis Gonzalez.

Diaz’s death was at least the third of a detainee housed at Camp East Montana, which opened last year at Fort Bliss to hold 5,000 detainees in the desert near the U.S.-Mexico border. Advocates for detainees have alleged a pattern of violence, abuse and neglect at the camp. One earlier death has been ruled a homicide.

Randall Kallinen, an attorney for Diaz’s family, said they are suspicious of the claim that his death was a suicide because he was not depressed and would have been reunited with his mother, two sons and siblings in Nicaragua if he had been deported.

“Even if it is suicide, was there something that happened to him that drove him to suicide?” Kallinen asked. “There still has to be an investigation.”

Messages seeking comment were left with ICE on Wednesday.

Gonzalez did not witness Diaz’s suicide attempt. A separate report by emergency medical services that was released Wednesday said Diaz was suspected of hanging himself with a bed sheet. Federal authorities have not released the findings of an autopsy, but have said the death was a “presumed suicide.”

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement picked up Diaz on Jan. 6 as agents fanned out across Minneapolis looking for people who may be in the country illegally. He was then sent to the sprawling Texas tent complex.

Diaz crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in 2024, requested asylum and was released. A judge later ordered his removal after he didn’t 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 Jan. 6 and later learned he’d been detained. They received a call on Jan. 15 from ICE saying Diaz was dead. Family members “were in disbelief,” said Carlos Morales, board president of Texas Nicaraguan Community, a nonprofit that helped the family raise money to repatriate Diaz’s remains to Nicaragua.

A coalition of groups and a Democratic congresswoman who represents El Paso have called for Camp East Montana to be closed.

Some of those calls came after the Jan. 3 death of 55-year-old Cuba native Geraldo Lunas Campos. A medical examiner has ruled that a homicide, citing physical restraint by guards.