An aerial view of the Camp East Montana at Fort Bliss in El Paso, on Sept. 7, 2025.
Paul Ratje for The Texas Tribune
Adequate is not a word anyone would want to describe their job performance, health or intelligence. Nor should it be used to describe how people are treated.
To be adequate is to be passable, just good enough to get by. Adequate is nowhere in the universe of outstanding or superb. It is such a low bar that it is easy to clear.
Article continues below this ad
We don’t believe Camp East Montana, the sprawling immigration detention center in El Paso, is adequate. Not even close. But that is the rating the detention center received in a recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement that found 49 violations. How a detention center can fail to meet standards 49 times — with 22 violations involving use of force and restraints — and still be deemed adequate or acceptable is beyond us.
Camp East Montana opened in July of 2025 and houses nearly 3,000 detainees. Of these people, according to ICE data, 82% have no criminal history. That raises questions about why they have been targets for enforcement — as opposed to, say, those immigrants who have committed crimes beyond questions about whether they entered the country legally — but it also underscores the point that there may be prisons that do a better job protecting people from the dangers of disease and abuse than Camp East Montana.
Here is what can be gauged from the ICE report summarizing a congressionally mandated inspection of Camp East Montana over three days in February by its Office of Detention Oversight.
Article continues below this ad
Since Camp East Montana opened, three people have died in custody.
The report found 49 deficiencies of national standards relating to security, exposure to disease, excessive force from staff, danger from other detainees, and negligent medical and mental health care.
An example of negligent medical care is a detainee with symptoms of tuberculosis who was not isolated and whose case was not reported by staff to ICE.
Article continues below this ad
The previous high number of violations uncovered at a detention facility, this year, was 13. The Office of Detention Oversight defines a “deficiency” as any violation of detention standards, policies, or operational procedures.
Nearly half of the deficiencies, 22, were about use of force and restraints, which ICE defines as “physical actions” necessary to restrain a detainee when other “reasonable efforts” have failed.
A sign marks the entrance to a series of hardened tents at the Camp East Montana immigrant detention center on the outskirts of El Paso. The detention center has been found in violation of 49 standards and should be shut down.
Morgan Lee/Associated Press
Some of these physical actions weren’t documented because security guards didn’t file written reports and, in some cases, didn’t record or preserve video recordings.
Article continues below this ad
Supervisors also failed to review whether such force, including use of chemical agents, was warranted.
Remember, this is from ICE itself. Conditions at Camp East Montana are so bad, ICE replaced the third party that had been awarded a $1.3 billion contract to build and run the facility. The company had no previous experience operating a detention facility.
Despite the 49 deficiencies, the inspector’s report gave Camp East Montana an “acceptable/adequate” rating. Two dozen Democratic members of Congress have asked that it be shut down. We agree. Shut it down.
Instead, along with its “acceptable/adequate” rating, the camp got a recommendation that ICE work with the new contractor to resolve its outstanding deficiencies.
Article continues below this ad
Given the lies and lack of transparency offered by Department of Homeland Security officials about the actions of federal agents, there’s reason to question the veracity of the Camp East Montana report and whether the deficiencies were undercounted and minimized.
ICE is spending billions of dollars buying warehouses across the country to build more and larger detention facilities, including one in San Antonio. Communities in which ICE plans to expand have organized to loudly voice bipartisan opposition to them.
They do not want immigrants who are a threat to no one to be held like prisoners in modern-day internment camps, much less in facilities inexplicably designated as adequate despite myriad violations of standards. The standard should be humane.
Article continues below this ad
Sign up for the ENsights opinion newsletter
Get the latest influential editorials, hard-hitting commentaries and thought-provoking opinions from the Alamo City in your inbox. Click here to sign up.