MEDICAL NEGLECT • GEO GROUP
He asked for his heart medication again and again. Then it was too late.
42-year-old Luis Gustavo Núñez Cáceres had relied on medication to manage a congenital heart condition all his life. His family says GEO Group failed to provide it. Weeks later, he was dead.
A Life Cut Short
Luis Gustavo Núñez Cáceres came to the United States from Honduras nearly two decades ago. His brother described him as having been full of life, full of hope, and always fighting for the people he loved.
As he was on his way to work on November 17, 2025, ICE agents detained Luis. Though he had no criminal history, they transferred him the following week to the GEO Group-run Joe Corley ICE Processing Center in Conroe, Texas.
At Joe Corley, Luis's health began to deteriorate. His brother has said that despite repeated requests, he was unable to access the medication he needed to manage a congenital heart condition — a claim consistent with many similar accounts of GEO facilities denying access to critical medications.
ICE has not provided the public with any details about the weeks leading up to Luis's December 23 admission to a nearby hospital's intensive care unit.
“They wouldn't let us visit our brother, but we were able to see him from behind a window. He was very fragile,” Marvin Núñez, one of his siblings, told Telemundo Houston. “I rushed to see him for the last time, because he was already in a coma.”
On the morning of January 5, Luis died.
But as his family was mourning the loss of their beloved son, brother, and cousin, they faced another obstacle: it would cost more than $4,000 just to get Luis's body from the morgue in Texas to Honduras, where they hoped to lay him to rest. They were able to raise the money in time through a GoFundMe and held Luis's funeral 12 days after his death, on January 17.
Preventable Deaths
In recent months, the rate of deaths per 10,000 people in ICE detention has climbed to a level not seen since the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. Advocates are sounding the alarm about the pace of such deaths — so far in 2026, a person has died in ICE custody on average every six days — but the tragedy of preventable deaths in private detention facilities is not itself new.
According to a 2024 report from the American Civil Liberties Union, American Oversight, and Physicians for Human Rights, independent medical experts reviewed the 52 deaths that occurred in ICE custody between 2017 and 2021. They found that 95% were preventable or possibly preventable with clinically appropriate medical care.
Well over a hundred people have died in GEO Group and CoreCivic immigration detention facilities. Many more have died in their other facilities.
Learn how you can help urge Citizens Bank to cut ties with the for-profit prison companies that are hurting our neighbors across the country.
Luis Gustavo Núñez Cáceres came to the United States more than 18 years ago "to pursue the American Dream," according to family members.
WHY CITIZENS BANK
Citizens Bank is a key financial partner to ICE's top detention contractors, GEO Group and CoreCivic. In the past year alone, Citizens has acted as administrative agent on agreements that have helped increase GEO's credit line by over $200 million.
In 2019, eight major U.S. banks pledged to cut ties with CoreCivic and GEO Group. Citizens chose to stay the course.
While the for-profit prison companies Citizens is backing hurt our neighbors, the bank continues to tout its commitment to fostering strong communities.
Join us to tell them it's time that they live up to that commitment.
More of our neighbors' stories
“It’s just one of the worst feelings. Here I am on deployment, on active duty, and they are abusing my mom.”
Reyna's son returned from his deployment to learn of her abuse by a GEO Group employee. GEO monitors more than 180,000 people in their communities, with few guardrails against abuse.
“I want to get out and eat pizza and bananas. I really want to go to school. I miss my friends from school.”
Thousands of children have been put in ICE detention since 2025. Five have been held for more than nine months at a CoreCivic facility in Texas, where they describe medical neglect, inedible food, and trauma.
