EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) — Camp East Montana, the immigration detention facility on Fort Bliss, as been operating for more than a year. Tuesday, El Paso City Council unanimously voted to draft a resolution calling for the facility’s closure. <\/p>\n
The 7-0 vote doesn’t mean the facility will close; the council said it wants to see it shut down.<\/p>\n
El Pasoans took to the podium during public comment, alleging poor conditions at the detention facility. <\/p>\n
Gilbert Perez said he had the opportunity to visit a replica. He said the facility served half-cooked food with maggots. A civil rights staff attorney alleged the food made a detainee sick.<\/p>\n
“The food makes him vomit because often the food comes spoiled ,and individuals are not able to stomach the food that is given. He says that ‘I am a skeleton of the person that I was before detention,'” said Charlotte Weiss with the Texas Civil Rights Project.<\/p>\n
City Representative Lily Limon shared quotes of how detainees described the camp. One called it a “graveyard of living people.”<\/p>\n
Three detainees have died at the facility. Civil rights attorneys are suing Camp East Montana over the alleged poor conditions. <\/p>\n
City representatives said Camp East Montana posed a public health risk to El Paso and lacks transparency about where taxpayer dollars go. <\/p>\n
“This is over $1 billion in this facility. The choices that they’re making — to not feed people, to not clothe them appropriately, to not give them basic toiletries — those are choices when they have an over $1 billion budget. When we stay silent, we’re complicit and we have to call out what is wrong,” said City Rep. Josh Acevedo. <\/p>\n
During the public comment period, one resident said the idea of a closure leaves unanswered questions. <\/p>\n
Mary Holguin asked, “Where are they going to send these people, if they close it down?” <\/p>\n
While a local city resolution can’t immediately shut down a federal facility, the council said Tuesday’s vote sends a strong message to the federal government. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) — Camp East Montana, the immigration detention facility on Fort Bliss, as been operating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478606,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[40686,138,140,139],"class_list":["post-478605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-camp-east-montana","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478605","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=478605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}