<\/p>\n
An aerial view of the Camp East Montana at Fort Bliss in El Paso, on Sept. 7, 2025.<\/p>\n
Paul Ratje for The Texas Tribune<\/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
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\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
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A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security called claims of inhumane conditions at the facility \u201ccategorically false.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEnsuring the safety, security, and well-being of individuals in our custody is a top priority at ICE,\u201d the agency spokesperson said in a statement to The Texas Tribune.<\/p>\n
Filed by the ACLU of Texas, the ACLU, the Texas Civil Rights Project and law firm Farella Braun + Martel, the federal lawsuit 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, including a homicide, a nearly monthlong measles outbreak and nearly 50 detention standards violations as reported by ICE\u2019s own inspectors, prompting calls for the camp\u2019s closure from immigrant advocates and Democratic lawmakers.<\/p>\n
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The civil rights groups behind the lawsuit also alleged in a December letter 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 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 to ICE dated May 22, the groups said the situation \u201ccontinued to deteriorate” and outlined additional complaints such as hazardous dust exposure.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Friday\u2019s lawsuit argues that conditions at the facility are \u201cunconstitutional punishment\u201d and violate detainees\u2019 due process rights under the Fifth Amendment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThese conditions are longstanding, pervasive, and well documented, and Defendants\u2019 continued inaction in the face of known risks shows their deliberate indifference \u2014 not mere negligence \u2014 to detainees\u2019 constitutional rights,\u201d the lawsuit said.<\/p>\n
DHS broadly denied or downplayed these allegations, reiterating its common refrains that ICE has provided the best healthcare many immigrants \u201chave received in their entire lives\u201d and that the federal agency has \u201chigher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens.\u201d The department spokesperson also said \u201cno detainees are being beaten or abused\u201d and all are given three meals a day that are evaluated by dietitians.<\/p>\n
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The petition, filed on behalf of four detainees, is also seeking approval to proceed as a class action to cover all those who are currently or will be 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\u00a0<\/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. 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In a statement provided 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. He was also placed in solitary confinement for 15 days, according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n
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\u201cNo one deserves such cruel treatment,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are all humans and deserve to be treated like it.\u201d<\/p>\n
U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar said in a statement to the Tribune that she is grateful for the legal fight. A leading critic of Camp East Montana, the El Paso Democrat called the facility \u201ca purgatory for human beings held there.\u201d She also vowed to continue her oversight visits and demand for the tent camp\u2019s permanent closure.<\/p>\n
Camp East Montana, first opened in August 2025, is located on Fort Bliss U.S. Army base.\u00a0<\/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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u201cCamp East Montana is at the epicenter of the administration\u2019s cruel deportation agenda,\u201d Savannah Kumar, staff attorney at the ACLU of Texas, said in a statement.\u00a0<\/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’s journalism. Find a complete\u00a0list of them here.<\/p>\n
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An aerial view of the Camp East Montana at Fort Bliss in El Paso, on Sept. 7, 2025.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,820],"class_list":["post-317739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-mysastaff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317739","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=317739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}