Camp East Montana is an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility located at Fort Bliss, Texas. The camp is a tent encampment, reported to be run by a company called Acquisition Logistics LLC, with a contract value of around $1.2 billion. [1] [2] The facility has a planned capacity of up to 5,000 detainees. [3] The ACLU has described it as the largest internment facility in the United States. [4]
Camp East Montana was opened on August 17, 2025. During its first 50 days, conditions at the camp violated at least 60 federal standards, according to ICE's own detention oversight unit. [5] The ACLU and other human-rights organizations called for its closure after interviewed detainees reported "physical and sexual abuse, medical neglect, and intimidation to self-deport". [6] [7] [8]
Two inmates have reported having their testicles crushed by guards as a form of punishment. [9]
As of January 2026 [update] , three detainees have died there in a period of 44 days. [10] An autopsy ruled the death of Geraldo Lunas Campos as a homicide caused by asphyxia. ICE officials stated that his death was a suicide while in solitary confinement, but witnesses told press that he had been handcuffed and choked by guards before his death. [11] [12] Individuals attempting to visit detainees from Minneapolis, where Lunas Campos had been detained, were told those inmates were no longer allowed to have visitors. [13]
On January 14, Victor Manuel Diaz died while detained at Camp East Montana, said by ICE to be due to "presumed suicide". [14] Unlike the previous two detainees who had autopsies performed by the local county medical examiner, Diaz's body was transferred to the William Beaumont Army Medical Center under the jurisdiction of the federal government. [14] [15]
In February 2026, it was discovered that poor sanitation at Camp East Montana had helped spread disease within the facilities, including two cases of tuberculosis and 18 cases of COVID-19. [16] Alarms about poor healthcare for immigrants were raised by Democrat Veronica Escobar, who reported that one-third of detainees have a chronic illness and around 200 to 300 need daily insulin, citing that conditions at Camp East Montana are deteriorating to the point of violating basic human rights. [17]
Spanish-language outlets, such as La Nación , [18] Univision, [19] and El Tiempo, [20] had dubbed Camp East Montana the "Alligator Alcatraz of Texas" after comparisons were made to how poorly the facility was designed, reporting that the facility had broken bathrooms as well as poor food and medicine supply systems, in addition to the fact that it had been put into operation while it was still under construction.
In January 2026, a coalition of immigrant rights organizations in New Mexico and Texas, including Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, Contigo Immigrant Justice, Estrella del Paso, and the Border Network for Human Rights (BNHR), issued a statement calling for the closure of the facilities after multiple incidents involving the deaths of Latinos in the camp and DHS violations of basic procedures for treating people. [21] [22]
In February 2026, The Irish Times published an article based on an interview with Seamus Culleton, one of the people detained by ICE in Boston, about the conditions at Camp East Montana, where he mentioned that food was quite scarce and that there were frequent fights among detainees to obtain food. He also mentioned that the camp did not have adequate laundry facilities and that many of the women were forced to wear dirty clothes for several weeks. Culleton described the facility as a concentration camp. [23] [24]
El Camp East Montana ha sido comparado con 'Alligator Alcatraz'
31°48′43″N106°17′53″W / 31.8119°N 106.2981°W
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