{"id":315397,"date":"2026-05-30T12:04:06","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T12:04:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/315397\/"},"modified":"2026-05-30T12:04:06","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T12:04:06","slug":"ice-sued-over-inhumane-conditions-at-camp-east-montana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/315397\/","title":{"rendered":"ICE sued over \u201cinhumane\u201d conditions at Camp East Montana"},"content":{"rendered":"

Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy<\/a>, and give us feedback<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A group of legal and civil rights organizations late Friday sued U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement over conditions at Camp East Montana in El Paso, the country\u2019s largest immigration detention facility.<\/p>\n

\u201cCamp East Montana is nothing short of a civil rights catastrophe,\u201d Kyle Virgien, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union\u2019s National Prison Project, said in a statement. \u201cWe\u2019re suing to ensure that no other human being has to endure the inhumane treatment that the Trump administration has inflicted on our clients.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Texas Tribune has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment.<\/p>\n

Filed by the ACLU of Texas, the ACLU, the Texas Civil Rights Project and law firm Farella Braun + Martel, the federal lawsuit<\/a> comes less than a year after the opening of the sprawling tent camp.<\/p>\n

In that time, the facility has seen at least three detainee deaths<\/a>, a measles outbreak<\/a> and nearly 50 detention standards violations<\/a> as reported by ICE\u2019s own inspectors, prompting calls for the camp\u2019s closure from immigrant advocates and Democratic lawmakers<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The civil rights groups behind the lawsuit also alleged in a December letter<\/a> that detained immigrants were subject to medical neglect, physical and sexual abuse by officers, insufficient food and denial of meaningful access to attorneys. In March, ICE switched out<\/a> the facility\u2019s prime operator for a more experienced contractor, saying the agency would \u201cwork closely with them\u201d to improve services, including higher standards of medical care. Still, in a subsequent letter<\/a> to ICE dated May 22, the groups said the situation \u201ccontinued to deteriorate\u201d and outlined additional complaints such as hazardous dust exposure. <\/p>\n

Friday\u2019s lawsuit argues that conditions at the facility are unconstitutional and violate detainees\u2019 due process rights under the Fifth Amendment. The petition, filed on behalf of four detainees, is also seeking approval to proceed as a class action to cover all those detained in Camp East Montana. <\/p>\n

One of the plaintiffs is Gerald Akari Angye, a detained immigrant who called the conditions at the camp \u201cinhumane and cruel.\u201d <\/p>\n

Prior to this lawsuit, the 35-year-old man had filed a petition in January seeking release from ICE detention. According to the filing, Angye was a high school teacher in Cameroon but fled after being kidnapped and tortured amid a separatist conflict<\/a>. He sought asylum after crossing through a New Mexico port of entry in December 2024. An immigration judge later denied his application, and Angye appealed. <\/p>\n

In a statement provided Friday by the civil rights groups, Angye said he had been beaten at Camp East Montana and never thought he would face \u201csuch severely violent treatments\u201d in the United States. <\/p>\n

\u201cNo one deserves such cruel treatment,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are all humans and deserve to be treated like it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Camp East Montana, first opened<\/a> in August 2025, is located on Fort Bliss U.S. Army base. <\/p>\n

Expected to ultimately reach a 5,000-bed capacity, the camp had a daily average of more than 2,500 detainees as of April 2, according to the most recent public data from ICE. The facility has also held the largest number of detained immigrants thus far in fiscal year 2026, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University found<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Disclosure: ACLU Texas has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune\u2019s journalism. Find a complete\u00a0list of them here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy, and give…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2133,4092,138,5032,1724,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-315397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-democrats","tag-department-of-homeland-security","tag-el-paso","tag-fort-bliss","tag-immigration","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}