Family seeks answers after ICE deported man to Costa Rica in vegetative state [View all]

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Family seeks answers after ICE deported man to Costa Rica in vegetative state
Exclusive: Before Randall Gamboa Esquivel died, his health had deteriorated badly while he was in ICE custody

Costa Rican family demands answers after ICE deportation and death: ‘Have you ever smelled a cadaver?’

Justo Robles in Pérez Zeledón, Costa Rica
Sun 11 Jan 2026 07.36 EST

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Gamboa was initially held at the Webb county detention center in Laredo and then transferred to the Port Isabel detention center in Los Fresnos, both in south Texas. Nearly 10 months later, in September 2025, the Trump administration flew the 52-year-old to the Costa Rican capital of San José on an air ambulance.

He never came round and five weeks later Gamboa was pronounced dead at a hospital in Pérez Zeledón, his home town, around three hours north of the capital.

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In an exclusive interview in Pérez Zeledón, Mata recounted that Gamboa had sounded and looked healthy when they talked via video calls while he was in detention, until 12 June, which marked their last conversation, after which he seemed to vanish. Mata waited for weeks to hear from him, but in fact Gamboa had fallen into a health crisis.

“My brother disappeared and we had to reach out to agencies, lawyers, consulates, anyone willing to help,” Mata said in Spanish, standing across the street from the hospital where Gamboa passed on 26 October.

“How is it possible that a man that left healthy, tall, chubby, robust, came back dirty, looked abandoned, with ulcers on his entire body, in a vegetative state?” she said.


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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/11/ice-death-costa-rica-randall-gamboa-esquivel