Family seeks answers after ICE deports man to Costa Rica in vegetative state | ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement)

The family of a Costa Rican man who was deported from the United States in a vegetative state and died shortly after returning home is still urgently seeking answers from authorities about what happened to him while in custody.

According to his family, Randall Gamboa Esquivel left Costa Rica in good health in December 2024 and crossed the US-Mexico border. However, Gamboa was detained by US authorities for illegally re-entering American territory because he had previously lived there undocumented between 2002 and 2013.

Gamboa was first held at the Webb County detention center in Laredo and later 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 by air ambulance to San José, the capital of Costa Rica.

He never regained consciousness, and five weeks later Gamboa was pronounced dead at a hospital in his hometown of Pérez Zeledón, about three hours north of the capital.

The Guardian spoke to relatives, neighbors and old friends who are shocked and angry at what is happening in Costa Rica. His younger sister, Greidy Mata, said she is still trying to understand how her health deteriorated so much while in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody.

In an exclusive interview on Pérez Zeledón, Mata described how Gamboa sounded and appeared healthy when they spoke on video calls while he was in custody until June 12, their last conversation, after which he disappeared. Mata waited 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 and anyone who wanted to help,” Mata, standing across from the hospital where Gamboa passed by on Oct. 26, said in Spanish.

“How is it possible for a healthy, tall, plump, well-built man to be in a vegetative state when he returns looking dirty, abandoned, with ulcers all over his body?” he said.

Medical records from Gamboa’s time in US custody, shared with the Guardian, show that a request was made for him to be transferred from the Port Isabel detention facility to the Valley Baptist medical center in Harlingen, 28 miles (45 km) east, on June 23.

According to a document are included in the medical record and published by the Ice Health Service Corps (IHSC), a service within ICE. this provides Gamboa, who provided health care in immigration detention and evaluated people scheduled for deportation, was hospitalized with “change of mental status”. The document also states that he was taking antipsychotic and antidepressant medications.

Relatives and friends denied Gamboa had a history of mental illness before immigrating to the United States.

“While in custody, medical professionals diagnosed him with unspecified psychosis and admitted him to Valley Baptist Hospital so he could receive appropriate mental health and medical care,” Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), ICE’s parent company, said in an email response when asked about Gamboa’s detention and health.

McLaughlin added that medical care for ICE detainees includes “dental and mental health screening within 12 hours of arrival at each detention facility, a full health evaluation within 14 days of entering ICE custody or arriving at a facility, and access to medical appointments and 24-hour emergency care.” He added: “This is the best health care many aliens have ever received in their lives.”

Medical documents at the hospital show that as of July 7, Gamboa had been diagnosed with at least 10 illnesses. Sepsis, a life-threatening reaction to an infection, is listed as his primary diagnosis, followed by rhabdomyolysis, a condition in which damaged muscle tissue rapidly breaks down.

Other conditions noted in the registry include protein malnutrition caused by an infection and toxic encephalopathy, or long-term exposure to drugs, radiation or metals that ultimately alter brain function.

Mata, who tried to keep her calm despite crying while giving an interview in Pérez Zeledón last December afternoon, said, “I can’t sleep thinking about what would have happened if we had known that he was sick. Why did they hide this information from us? We found out where he was in August.”

“This information didn’t come from the Costa Rican consulate or ICE, it came from a lawyer we asked for help and who called us and said, ‘I found him in bed, he’s following you with his eyes but he can’t talk, he’s in a vegetative state,'” he said.

Costa Rica’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined to be interviewed by the Guardian to discuss Gamboa’s case. He also did not answer a series of questions, including whether any consular officials visited Gamboa while he was hospitalized in Texas.

Costa Rican immigration director Omer Badilla said his office had been notified that Gamboa would be deported to San José, but had not received any details regarding his health.

According to another document in Gamboa’s hospital medical reports, a doctor who visited Gamboa on August 2 wrote: “He does not move or react. Blinks from time to time… immobility and silence present. Patient appears to exhibit cerebral posturing.”

“Decerebration posture” typically means that the patient’s arms and legs are held rigidly straight with the head arched back and the toes pointed downward. The doctor also noted that Gamboa “went through the process of tube placement.”

A list of medications included in medical records showed Gamboa received an IV injection and more than a dozen medications on Aug. 7, about a month before he was deported to Costa Rica. He was evaluated as catatonic.

“Sometimes it all seems like a horror story or a lie,” said Mata, who prepared to celebrate Christmas while mourning the death of her brother.

Gamboa said there was an initial spark of optimism when he arrived home. “It was nice to see him again and touch him because it gave us hope that he could get better,” she said. “But the doctors never said that… and then we realized that the condition he was in was irreversible.”