El Paso, Texas - The family of a Cuban migrant who died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody early in January has used a legal filing to accuse camp guards of choking him to death.

Geraldo Lunas Campos died of unknown causes on January 3 while under the care of ICE at the Camp East Montana detention center near El Paso, an official statement revealed.

In the weeks that followed, Campos' family alleged that guards at the detention facility choked him to death.

Their allegations were substantiated by reports that the medical examiner's office is likely to rule the cause of death as "asphyxia due to neck and chest compression."

Claims of a potential homicide were made increasingly concrete when one of Campos' fellow detainees said he witnessed his death, and another said he saw him struggle with guards.

Since these claims came forward, leading the family to believe that Campos was murdered by camp guards, both witnesses have been given deportation notices.

As a result, Campos' family on Tuesday asked the US District Court of the Western District of Texas to block the deportations so that both witnesses could give statements on his death.

The filing comes as the family is preparing to file a wrongful-death suit, the New York Times reports.

According to the legal filing, the deportation order "raises the inference that the federal government is attempting to make them unavailable as witnesses in petitioners' anticipated lawsuit."

One of the alleged witnesses said that he saw guards choking Campos as he repeatedly tried to tell them, "I cannot breathe," in Spanish.

"He said, 'I cannot breathe, I cannot breathe,'" Santos Jesus Flores told the Washington Post. "After that, we don't hear his voice anymore, and that's it."