Lawful resident Pete Montejo, 72, hospitalized multiple times for septic shock before dying in ICE custody

Pete Sumalo Montejo, a 72-year-old citizen of the Philippines who entered the United States as a lawful permanent resident in 1962, died on December 5, 2025, at Valley Baptist Medical Center in Harlingen, Texas. He was arrested by ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO Houston) on February 25, 2025, during a targeted enforcement action, and was transferred to the Montgomery Processing Center in Conroe, Texas, pending removal proceedings. Between May and November 2025, Montejo was hospitalized multiple times for serious medical conditions — including anemia and septic shock from pneumonia — and was returned to ICE custody after each hospitalization. On December 5, he suffered cardiac arrest at the Treasure Hills Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center in Harlingen, where ICE had placed him, and was transported by EMS to Valley Baptist Medical Center, where resuscitation efforts failed. He was pronounced dead at 2:20 p.m.

ICE attributed the death to "suspected natural causes" and, in its public release, led with Montejo's criminal history — a 1992 conviction for aggravated sexual assault of a child and subsequent arrests — rather than the circumstances of his detention or the medical decisions that preceded his death. His December 5 death was one of seven ICE custody deaths that month, making December 2025 the deadliest month in what reporting described as the deadliest year for ICE custody deaths in two decades. Related December 2025 ICE custody deaths recorded in this archive include Shiraz Fatehali Sachwani (December 6, #491), Francisco Gaspar-Andres (December 3, #494), Fouad Saeed Abdulkadir (December 10), Jean Wilson Brutus (December 11), Delvin Francisco Rodriguez (December 12), and Nenko Gantchev (December 14).