A prison sentence or an immigration case is not a death sentence, but inside America’s prisons and detention centers, it too often becomes one.
Six people have died in ICE custody in the first six weeks of 2026. Geraldo Lunas Campos was one of them. Officials initially claimed that Campos was attempting suicide when staff rushed in to save him. A medical examiner disagreed and labeled his death a homicide, choked to death by guards at a Texas ICE facility.
When Melvin Cancer died last year in prison, his family was told the cause of death was a heart attack. Just this week, the FBI announced it was investigating his death as a homicide, allegedly killed by one or more members of the correctional staff, and covered up by even more.
In 2024, Robert Brooks was beaten to death by New York correctional staff, who captured the entire incident on body camera. More than a dozen people participated or witnessed the violence, none intervened.
In that same year, Marine veteran Anthony Johnson Jr. died in jail. His death was ruled a homicide by asphyxiation, after officers held him down with a knee on his back and ignored his agonizing pleas that he could not breath.
The academy award nominated film, the Alabama Solution, examines the death of Steven Davis 2019 by correctional staff in Alabama, who claimed they used justified force. Witnesses say that even after Davis was on the ground, staff stomped him and beat him with metal baton, causing 16 distinct injuries to his head which led to brain bleed and death.
Deaths in custody at the hands of staff are not new.
More than a decade ago, I wrote a piece for the Huffington post titled “When Prison Guards Kill Inmates: Florida’s Prison Massacre Revealed.” In the article, I described a haunting image of Darrel Rainey, who was deliberately left under a scalding hot shower until 90% of his body was burned after he refused to clean his cell. I also wrote about Randall Jordan-Aparo who was gassed to death after begging for life saving medication. And about Latandra Ellington, a mother who reported that her life was being threated by a member of the correctional staff; she was found dead a day later.
In most of these cases, no one was ever prosecuted or held accountable in any way. Accurate data about deaths is custody is hard to come by. But what we do know is that deaths in prison at the hands of staff is a human rights problem that we should be concerned about.
Deaths in custody are particularly horrifying because the people who are killed are entirely at the mercy of those paid to protect them.
When people are placed in custody, they are forced to rely on the state for their every need. Food, water, movement, medical care, safety, sanitation, and contact with the outside world.
Prisons — and now overflowing detention centers — are opaque eco-systems, often hidden from public view and located far from family and loved ones. What happens in prison often stays in prison, buried alongside the truth.
When people die in custody because of neglect, indifference, or actual violence, it is not simply tragic. It is a failure of the system. And it happens in our name. We pay for these institutions with tax payer dollars. We need to demand accountability and transparency. We need to demand better and safer custodial conditions.
And if we don’t speak up, who will?
Most prison sentences, and certainly most immigration detention cases, are not meant to be death sentences.
But too often inside America’s prisons and detention centers, they become one.