Your answer to that question depends on which of two parallel realities you inhabit: one where Russia is a potential strategic partner of the United States, or one where it is a threat. The contest between those realities will play out on social media, in policy, and possibly through conflict.

The U.S. National Security Strategy, released in December, reads like a founding document of the first reality. It describes Russia as a potential business partner of the United States, no real threat to NATO, and barely a threat to Ukraine. It dismisses, even while acknowledging as a notion held by “many Europeans,” that Russia represents an “existential threat.”

“The truth is that ‘US intelligence’ assesses that Russia does not even have the capability to conquer and occupy Ukraine, what to speak of ‘invading and occupying’ Europe,” the Director of National Intelligence posted on Dec. 20.

The actual threat, the strategy avers, is “activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty…creating strife, censorship of free speech.” This view was elucidated earlier by President Trump and Vice President JD Vance. In his February 2025 speech to the Munich Security Conference, Vance shocked the world by criticizing Romania’s decision to a presidential election based on intelligence reports confirming Russian interference. But the U.S. vice president downplayed the evidence as "the flimsy suspicions of an intelligence agency and enormous pressure from its continental neighbors.” 

Other activities that undermine political liberty,” according to the strategy, include EU efforts to investigate and regulate U.S. social-media companies. On Dec. 5, the EU levied a $140 million fine on X, owned by Trump supporter Elon Musk, for practices that it said "deceive users,” such as selling verification to users that the site isn’t actually verifying. 

“The EU should be supporting free speech not attacking American companies over garbage,” Vance tweeted. 

What’s needed, the strategy says, is a policy of “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations.”

The White House has already taken concrete steps to punish Europeans it sees as contributing to EU “censorship,” as though to prove the strategy’s rhetoric is more than just political theatre. Just before Christmas, the State Department took aim at what State Marco Rubio described as “organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose.” The State Department issued visa bans against  former European Commissioner Thierry Breton and four other people who work for European think tanks that study disinformation on social media. 

“When you find yourself repeating Vladimir Putin talking points, it's time for a time-out to look in the mirror. And is it time for some… candid self-assessment,” Brad Bowman, a senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Defense One in December.

To inhabit this reality also requires ignoring, as the new U.S. strategy does, or downplaying—as Vance did in Munich—Russia’s well-documented campaign to loosen European cohesion by backing loudly nationalist, right-wing parties. 

For example, Russia has links to Germany’s AfD, which espouses Kremlin-friendly positions and—some German politicians say—uses its roles in the German parliament to gather intelligence for Russian military efforts against Ukraine and the EU.

“One cannot help but get the impression that the AfD is working through a list of tasks assigned to it by the Kremlin with its inquiries” into drone defenses and critical infrastructure, Georg Maier, the interior minister of the German state of Thuringia, told the Handelsblatt newspaper.  

AfD officials have denied the claim.

Russia has used X to boost other pro-Russian politicians across Europe, efforts that Elon Musk has helped by making it harder to track Russian disinformation efforts on the platform, often using the same “censorship” rhetoric while ignoring the fact that X is banned in Russia. 

EU parliamentarian Alexandra Geese, in a fiery speech Dec. 18, accused Musk, Trump, and Putin of waging “war” on the European Union.  The Russian-backed Voice of Europe media network, which includes a website and radio programing, was also able to amplify its reach and achieve a look of legitimacy via the X platform. In this way, Voice of Europe content was the bullet, but X was the delivery mechanism, the gun. Theoretically, that same principle should work for all media outlets, and the most factual and relevant ones would rise to the top. But that’s not what happened. 

“Musk systematically downranks—that means censors—speech of pro-European political parties, violating our freedom of expression,” Geese said.“In turn, he boosts pro-Putin parties that want to destroy the European Union, and the evidence from Germany, Poland, and UK, is overwhelming.” 

Grand bargains and spheres of influence

The White House strategy signals a hope that Russia, and, by extension, Putin-favored anti-EU parties, can play a role in a future “strategic stability” arrangement wherein Russia, China, and the United States quietly agree to contain themselves within geographically defined hemispheres. What does that look like? On paper, this would look like a map with circles drawn around Europe, Asia, and the Western Hemisphere, the latter of which would be labeled “U.S.” 

The strategy also includes an only slightly less literal blueprint for a more “stable” new world order. It describes this as the “Trump Corollary” to the 1832 Monroe Doctrine, effectively a blueprint for exactly such a carve up. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin is a fan of the idea that only a few countries possess true “sovereignty,” as he put it in 2017. The other, non-sovereign nations (Ukraine especially) belong within the sphere of influence of another nation, such as Russia. His kinetic war against Ukraine aims to reduce that country to a Russian oblast; the hybrid war he is waging across Europe aims to break the EU into more controllable bits—as former Trump national-security expert Fiona Hill testified in 2019.

Trump’s push to illegally annex Greenland less Russia or China do it first plays to the same Monroe-doctrine thinking. But the Jan. 3 abduction of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro provides a vivid example of a new doctrine in action. 

While the Caracas raid stunned the world, Hill predicted it—or at least foreshadowed the very limited degree to which Putin would intervene in the event of a U.S. attack on the Venezuelan government, despite decades of investment and allyship with the Maduro regime. 

“The Russians at this particular juncture [March and April of 2019] were signaling very strongly that they wanted to somehow make some very strange swap arrangement between Venezuela and Ukraine … They were basically signaling: You know, you have your Monroe Doctrine. You want us out of your backyard. Well, you know, we have our own version of this. You're in our backyard in Ukraine.” 

Trump’s claim that the U.S. must control Greenland (an autonomous territory under Denmark) for the sake of its “security,” despite a long-term agreement between Denmark and the U.S. that allows the U.S. to position forces ther,e only makes sense in a context in which NATO cannot live up to its Article 5 commitment. Similarly, Trump’s Jan. 17 threat of punative tarrifs against NATO allies for re-inforcing Greenland’s security is logical only in a world where NATO is a destabilizing force, not a vital alliance to defend Europe from Russian aggression. 

A Dec. 30 New York Times article lays out in detail how the “stability” view came to dominate White House policy toward Russia during Trump’s second term, beginning with Trump asking Steve Witkoff to establish a back channel—“a business guy to a business guy”—with Russian government officials during the transition period between the Nov. 2024 election and Trump’s 2025 inauguration. The article describes “a phalanx of Ukraine skeptics led by the vice president, JD Vance, and like-minded officials he seeded at the Pentagon and elsewhere in the administration,” such as defense policy undersecretary Elbridge Colby. Colby and other officials were “eager to start withholding munitions” and refused to provide evidence of Ukrainian military gains on the battlefield. 

After the U.S. strategy’s release, the Russian government’s chief spokesman described the strategy as “consistent with our vision.”

Except, of course, it isn’t.

The second reality

If the first reality is one where the world is “stable” because China, Russia, and the United States have agreed to partition it geographically, the second reality is one where Putin continues to regard the U.S. as an eternal threat—or the “stronger” of the two, in the words of one former senior White House official. In other words, an adversary Russia can bargain with, so long as such bargains serve the larger goal of fracturing and weakening the other party. 

Russia’s own 2023 "Foreign Policy Concept” document repeats this view, listing as a goal to “eliminate the vestiges of domination by the US and other unfriendly states in global affairs.”

The inhabitants of this second reality see Russia as a growing threat even though European militaries are stronger on paper than Moscow's, with bigger budgets, newer tanks, ships, soldiers, etc. A journal article by Russian Adm. Igor Kostyukov acknowledges the same. 

In this reality, Putin has turned to cyber attacks, open election interference, sabotage, arson, assassination attempts, and other “hybrid war” tactics because a conventional war would be futile. Russia’s goal here is to sap resources and create an environment of instability. 

Polish Chief of the General Staff, Gen. Wiesław Kukuła, said Russia’s Nov. 17 sabotage attack against Polish rail, on top of months of drone incursions over NATO territories, shows “the adversary has begun preparing for war. They are building a certain environment here that is intended to undermine public trust in the government.”

Russia’s increasing drone incursions are perhaps the best example of this. They seek to normalize the presence of Russian drones over European skies, George Barros, the Geospatial Intelligence Team Lead at the Institute for the Study of War, told Defense One. Once adversary drones become a regular feature of life in Europe, it becomes much easier to use them in a conflict. Russia’s attacks on infrastructure serve a similar purpose, making democratically elected leaders look helpless as air or rail traffic grinds to a halt and no one is certain why.

NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander lives in this second reality. “Hybrid threats are a real issue, and I do think that we can anticipate more of that happening," Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, told reporters at the alliance’s military headquarters outside the Belgian city of Mons on Dec 4. 

In this reality, the EU is not a threat to Europe, but a crucial partner. And that partnership is visible in joint projects and activities. Both the United States and the European Union are supporting Ukraine financially and militarily, and working together on the challenge of stopping Russian drone incursions elsewhere. In a September press conference Grynkewich described the EU’s drone wall initiative as “very aligned with some of our thoughts of fortifying our eastern flank from a land and air domain perspective.”

Drone incursions and infrastructure attacks aren't the only way the Kremlin seeks to undermine public confidence. “Russia pursues a systematic strategy of undermining elections and influencing public opinion in the West,” the Carnegie Endowment wrote last February. “EU and NATO countries must recognize that Moscow often acts through agents within their own borders, and build resilience to such interference.”

ISW’s Barros concurred. “The Russians are trying to drive wedges and break unity. It manifests differently in different EU countries…Russia crafts bespoke narratives to target specific countries and target demographics within those countries. It's very savvy, sophisticated, and there's rarely a single unified universal message.”

The second reality—but not the new NSS—also acknowledges the growing coordination between Russia, China, Iran, North Korea. Russia and China have been open about their goal of reducing the size and influence of the United States.

“Russia has strengthened its relationships with the CCP, North Korea, and Iran,” Gen. Dan Caine, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs told lawmakers in June. 

Lawmakers are listening, even if they are not in total agreement. The recently passed National Defense Authorization Act, among its various provisions such as continued support for Ukraine and European Command’s force posture in Europe, also includes the DISRUPT Act, which requires multiple federal agencies to establish task forces and prepare strategies for countering Russian, Chinese, North Korean, and Iranian cooperation. 

In other words, Congress realizes that Dictators United is a threat and they’ve acted on that realization by ordering U.S. agencies to do something. But many in Congress still support Russia’s anti-E.U. activities in Europe because many of them still share Russia’s goal of a weaker E.U., one less capable of penalizing U.S. companies. The result is contradictory and self-defeating policy, a mess.

These areas of contention illustrate the contest between realities. In one reality, Putin is a rational actor who poses no real threat to Europe and can be satiated with stolen land and sanctions relief.

In the other reality, an agreement where Russia keeps stolen land and escapes sanctions is a victory for Putin and a loss for the United States. In the 2025 book “If Russia Wins,” Carlo Masala, a former deputy director of research at the NATO Defence College in Rome, suggests that such a victory would enable Putin to re-arm, stage limited incursions in Estonia and elsewhere, and complete his efforts to fracture Europe.

“Russia's goal, as it has repeatedly stated, goes beyond Ukraine. It wants to roll back the European security architecture to its 1997 state,” Masala told Defense One over email. “At the same time, this war is also an important part of the struggle for a new world order. A Russian victory in Ukraine could further encourage China to pursue its hegemonic ambitions in Asia, and especially towards Taiwan, more decisively than before.”

Ultimately, he said, China and Russia might succeed in replacing the United States and allied democracies in global influence.

That such an outcome would be disastrous for the United States is obvious to those who dwell in the second reality. But the Trump administration, and at least some of its supporters, live in the first reality. And it’s not clear how to convey the danger to the second group in a social media environment that is more and more vulnerable to wide-scale distortion, manipulation, and suppression of reality.

Blaise Metreweli, the new head of Britain's foreign intelligence agency, remarked in a Dec. 15 speech: “Falsehood spreads faster than fact, dividing communities and distorting reality….We are now operating in a space between peace and war.”

Former Russian foreign and prime minister Yevgeny Primakov, a key influencer of Putin, might agree.

Primakov served as prime minister only briefly, between 1998 and 1999, but is largely credited with turning the country away from the West after the fall of the Soviet Union. He is also a sort of conceptual grandfather to the idea of modern hybrid warfare, or, perhaps, simply the guy who returned Soviet active measures to the Russian playbook. Deception and corruption can interchange with military force to achieve objectives.

For Primakov, the world between peace and war, where institutions were menacing or incompetent, and where citizens and leaders lived in realities of alternative facts, was a comfortable space to exist. It looked like the Russia he knew.

Trump made multiple efforts to claim Greenland as U.S. territory in his Wednesday speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, as we noted atop yesterday’s newsletter. “That’s our territory,” Trump said. “This enormous unsecured island is actually part of North America,” he told his European audience. 

But after a meeting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte later in the day, Trump said he had changed his mind. As a result, “we have formed the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland and, in fact, the entire Arctic Region,” Trump announced on social media, without sharing details of that agreement. “Based upon this understanding, I will not be imposing the Tariffs that were scheduled to go into effect on February 1st,” he said. 

“Additional discussions are being held concerning the Golden Dome” U.S. missile defense system, which is still under development, “as it pertains to Greenland,” Trump added, again without elaborating. 

Worth noting: The U.S. has had jurisdiction over military bases on Greenland for the past 75 years, so it remains unclear what would be substantively new about any deal Trump agreed to Wednesday. According to the New York Times, “Denmark would give the United States sovereignty over small pockets of Greenlandic land where the United States could build military bases, according to three senior officials.” But conditions for such base expansions had existed previously in the U.S.-Denmark agreement dating back to 1951. The Associated Press reported a similarly-thin development from Trump’s Wednesday negotiations, while noting “details were still being worked out.” 

After his discussions with Trump, NATO’s Rutte said the subject of Greenland was not discussed. “That issue did not come up anymore in my conversation tonight with the president,” Rutte told Bret Baier of Fox. “He’s very much focused on what do we need to do to make sure that that huge arctic region, where change is taking place at the moment, where the Chinese and Russians are more and more active—how we can protect it. That was really the focus of our discussions,” the alliance leader said.  

• By the way: Where is the military’s Golden Dome money going? U.S. lawmakers want to know, and they’ve stepped up their efforts to find out where at least $23 billion is headed. Now they’re writing their queries into law, Defense One’s Thomas Novelly reported Wednesday. The criticism, tucked into a four-bill package that included the annual defense appropriations bill on Tuesday, marks Congress’ latest concern over secrecy and spending on the missile defense initiative. Lawmakers said they haven’t received a master deployment schedule, cost schedule, performance metrics, or a finalized system architecture for the project.

But even after Trump bailed from his threat of economic war, European Union leaders “will rethink their ties with the U.S. at an emergency summit on Thursday,” Reuters reports from Brussels where Trump this week “badly shook confidence in the transatlantic relationship, diplomats said.” 

Reminder about Trump’s tendency to resort to tariffs to punish allies: It’s pretty much only hurting Americans. The Wall Street Journal was the latest to affirm this point on Monday, citing new data from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy to report “American consumers and importers absorbed 96%” of the cost of Trump’s tariffs in 2025. And that “echoes recent reports by the Budget Lab at Yale and economists at Harvard Business School,” the Journal reported, writing, “Rather than acting as a tax on foreign producers, the tariffs functioned as a consumption tax on Americans.” 

The bigger problem: “That is likely to fuel higher U.S. inflation over time,” said Julian Hinz, an economics professor at Germany’s Bielefeld University who co-authored the study for the Kiel Institute. And as is nearly always the case, when “Asked to choose the country’s top issue, Americans pick the economy by a nearly two-to-one margin over any other topic,” CNN reported last week marking one year into Trump’s second term. Relatedly, “A 55% majority say that Trump’s policies have worsened economic conditions in the country, with just 32% saying they’ve made an improvement.” (The New York Times similarly found 49% feel they’re worse off, with fewer than a third believing they’re better off today than they were one year ago.)

Also in CNN’s survey data: Trump’s Greenland plan (at net-negative 40 points) polls lower than his approval on the Epstein files (at net-negative 38 points). The Times, meanwhile, found Trump at -44 for his handling of the Epstein files and -13 on Venezuela; it did not ask about Greenland. 

But Trump’s designs on Greenland have been music to Russia’s ears, as Simon Shuster explained Wednesday in The Atlantic. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made the point himself when asked about Greenland Tuesday in Moscow. “I just want to highlight that the Euro-Atlantic idea of ensuring security and cooperation has discredited itself,” he said. 

Why it matters: “By making a nakedly imperialist claim on the territory of a faithful American ally, Trump has made it far easier for Putin and Lavrov to justify Russia’s imperialist claim on Ukraine,” Shuster writes. “Western appeals to the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the autonomy of nations start to ring hollow when the country that anchors the West sets out to violate those principles so brazenly.”

And indeed Lavrov declared this week, “As President Trump said, Greenland is important to the security of the United States. Crimea is no less important to the security of Russia.” According to Shuster, the timing and disruption of Trump’s Greenland threat “sends a clear message to Moscow: They need only to bide their time, and the West may tear itself apart.” Previously, Lavrov said this week, “it would have been hard to imagine that such a thing could happen.” 

After Trump’s speech at Davos, Peter Goodman of the New York Times reported in an analysis piece, “China Wins as Trump Cedes Leadership of the Global Economy.” He writes, “China is—at least rhetorically—invested in economic values that Mr. Trump has renounced: engagement in multilateral institutions to advance its causes, faith in the wealth-enhancing powers of global trade and recognition that no country is large enough or powerful enough to go it alone.” 

What’s more, “Given that Europe’s largest economies—especially Germany—contain large-scale auto industries, and given that China has become the dominant source of electric vehicles and batteries, the two economic powers are likely to remain major industrial rivals.” 

Also notable: Trump’s speech at Davos dipped into a substantial bit of racism, especially regarding his portrayal of Somali-Americans contrasted with Trump’s declared affinity for his European roots, as the Guardian’s David Smith pointed out on Wednesday. 

Here’s Trump: “The west cannot mass-import foreign cultures which have failed to ever build a successful society of their own. I mean, we’re taking people from Somalia, and Somalia is a failed—it’s not a nation. Got no government, got no police, got no nothing,” Trump told the audience in Switzerland. “Can you believe that Somalia, they turned out to be higher IQ than we thought. I always say these are low IQ people.”

He continued, “Look, I am derived from Europe, Scotland, and Germany. 100% Scotland, my mother, 100% German. My father. And we believe deeply in the bonds we share with Europe as a civilization,” Trump said. “This is the precious inheritance that America and Europe have in common, and we share it. We share it but we have to keep it strong. We have to become stronger, more successful and more prosperous than ever. We have to defend that culture and rediscover the spirit that lifted the west from the depths of the dark ages to the pinnacle of human achievement,” he said before promoting the promises of artificial intelligence. 

For your radar: “The U.S. Is Actively Seeking Regime Change in Cuba by the End of the Year,” the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. 

• Do you have questions about the Trump administration’s efforts to push regime change in 2026? We’ll be tackling the topic on our next Defense One Radio podcast later this week, and would love to hear your thoughts.

Welcome to this Thursday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter focused on developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so we’d like to take a moment to thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1931, the U.S. Navy ordered its first rotary-wing aircraft: a Pitcairn OP-1 autogyro.

Around the Defense Department

Army unveils new tank—five years early. Early versions of the M1E3 Abrams tank—minus weapons and electronic systems—will roll out to tank platoons for testing this summer, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George told reporters at the Detroit Auto Show on Wednesday. That’s five years ahead of the original schedule, thanks to a new acquisition strategy that leans heavily on commercial parts. Defense One’s Meghann Myers reports from Detroit, here.

Update: Qatar’s gift to Trump is expected to begin flying as Air Force One this summer, the Wall Street Journal reports. “It couldn’t be determined whether the plane will be a fully functional Air Force One by then, beyond likely containing a secure communications system and sporting a new coat of paint,” writes Marcus Weisgerber, who covered AF1 matters for Defense One. “Trump has been pushing the Air Force to get the Qatari plane ready for service, White House officials said, and staff have regularly asked for updates as the president continues to complain about the current jets.”

Note: That Qatari jet is part of the more than $1.4 billion Trump has pocketed since taking office last January, as the New York Times detailed in a stunning multimedia feature published this week (gift link). 

Got an idea for reforming defense acquisition? The Pentagon’s all ears. “Bring us your most disruptive, most unconstrained ideas,” Mike Cadenazzi, assistant defense secretary for industrial base policy, said during a keynote speech at the Honolulu Defense Forum last week. “We need radically different outcomes in the defense industrial base. So we need radically different ideas on how to get there.”

Print munitions on the battlefield, suggested Lt. Gen. James Glynn, commander of Marine Forces Pacific. Read on, from Defense One’s Jennifer Hlad, here.

Thales is trying to find a buyer for sonar arrays cut loose when the Navy cancelled its Constellation-class frigate program. Read about that and more in this week’s Defense Business Brief newsletter by Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams.

Deportation nation

As far-right influencers and Fox pundits push the president to invoke the Insurrection Act, more active-duty soldiers have been given prepare-to-deploy orders for possible tasking in Minneapolis, MS Now reported Wednesday. The latest troops include “at least a few hundred” members of an Army military police brigade stationed at Fort Bragg, N.C. 

That order follows a similar one issued last week to 1,500 soldiers from the Army’s 11th Airborne Division in Alaska, in addition to as many as 200 Texas National Guard troops, the New York Times reminded readers Wednesday. 

Update: An appeals court just temporarily authorized ICE to use force against peaceful demonstrators, Reuters reported Wednesday after the 8th Circuit court put a hold on an injunction that had frozen such tactics. “The St. Louis-based appeals court sided with DHS on Wednesday in a brief unsigned order…while it weighs whether to issue a longer-term ruling that would pause it throughout the duration of the Trump administration’s appeal.”

Developing: Secret ICE memo authorizes breaking into homes without a judicial warrant, which would seem to violate the Constitution’s 4th amendment on unreasonable searches and seizures, the Associated Press reported Wednesday after a whistleblower complaint surfaced in a legal development that has jarred many experts and academics. 

“For years, immigrant advocates, legal aid groups and local governments have urged people not to open their doors to immigration agents unless they are shown a warrant signed by a judge,” Rebecca Santana of AP writes. “That guidance is rooted in Supreme Court rulings that generally prohibit law enforcement from entering a home without judicial approval. The ICE directive directly undercuts that advice.” 

Notable: The Department of Homeland Security’s own legal training materials say these sort of break-ins are unconstitutional. And that reported detail that ICE hid the memo from the public and passed it along only by word of mouth and private conversation suggests U.S. officials may have been aware of the destructive legal potential this policy seems to contain, Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council observed. “This is the Trump administration trashing the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution in pursuit of its mass deportation agenda,” he added. 

Reax: The case marks “such a departure from established Fourth Amendment rules that it’s perilously close to open disregard for constitutional rights,” said Joyce Vance, former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama.

“State terrorism at its finest,” said John Horgan, professor at Georgia State University’s Department of Psychology and director of the Violent Extremism Research Group. “They are so desperate to instigate a violent confrontation that they will now attempt to break down your front door and enter your home without a warrant.”

“Pretty sure we fought a revolution over this,” said Penn State Associate Professor Zack Furness. “But knowing that also seems like part of their calculus, in terms of hoping for a violent reaction from the public they can use to justify additional oppressive/unconstitutional actions (regardless of whether such a reaction would be warranted, legally justifiable, etc.). It’s all so ugly and wrong.”

“I’d been led to believe the GOP was the party of private property rights,” said University of Minnesota law professor Charlotte Garden.

And in an update to yet another ICE detainee’s death in the U.S., the Jan. 3 passing of a 55-year-old Cuban man at a detention facility in Texas has now been ruled a homicide, the Washington Post reported Wednesday. His name was Geraldo Lunas Campos. 

“Based on the investigative and examination findings, it is my opinion that the cause of death is asphyxia due to neck and torso compression,” Adam C. Gonzalez, deputy medical examiner for El Paso County, said in the report, which asserts, “The manner of death is homicide.”

“Mr. Lunas Campos’s family said that a fellow detainee saw the guards choke him to death, according to the legal filing they submitted on Tuesday,” the New York Times reports. “Another detainee saw Mr. Lunas Campos struggle with the guards before he died, the filing said. Both witnesses have since been given deportation notices.”

Also notable: U.S. officials have repeatedly changed their account of what happened, the Times reports. “On Jan. 9, ICE said that he had died after ‘experiencing medical distress.’ But after the Washington Post reported the family’s claims about the death last week, a Department of Homeland Security official said that Mr. Lunas Campos had died by suicide.”

Camp East Montana is located at the Fort Bliss military base in El Paso. Three men have died there in the past two months, including Campos. It’s the largest ICE detention center in the U.S., with a 5,000-person capacity. About 2,700 people are confined there presently, the Times reports. 

Related reading: 

• “Four migrants die in US immigration custody over first 10 days of 2026,” Reuters reported 10 days ago; 
• And “Four died in ICE custody this week as 2025 deaths reach 20-year high,” Reuters reported on Dec. 19.