An internal investigation has revealed at least 60 federal standards violations at Texas’ Fort Bliss camp, including medical neglect and barring attorneys from seeing detained clients
The largest immigrant detention camp in U.S. history has subjected some detained individuals to conditions that have violated at least 60 federal standards, according to internal documents reviewed by The Washington Post.
The ICE inspection report, which The Post says “is not public and has not been previously reported,” says contracted staff at the Camp East Montana detention camp at Texas’ Fort Bliss have ignored dozens of federal standards meant to ensure detainee and safety standards, by failing to conduct basic intake screenings for suicidal ideations and other mental health conditions, ignoring detainees’ medical needs, and shutting detainees out from contact with their attorneys, loved ones, and even their assigned officer.
“Some medical charts were never filled out and some intake screenings were never conducted, meaning, the inspectors wrote, that the medical team could not ‘identify emergent or past chronic medical conditions, mental illness issues such as suicidal/homicidal ideation or intent that could lead to detainee life-safety issue,’” The Post reported.
One detainee who was supposed to be on suicide watch appeared to have been ignored by staff while another detained individual was “given psychotropic medication but there was no record of that person ever consenting to it,” mirroring allegations from under the first Trump administration. And, in another abuse of power trend emerging under the current administration, the site barred at least one federal lawmaker from exercising their oversight responsibilities, The Post said.
“For the first three weeks of August, when legal representatives and Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), who represents El Paso, tried to meet with detainees in person, they were turned away.” ICE officials claimed to the lawmaker that the site was “still under construction.” However, “internal ICE records obtained by The Post show the facility held 15 detainees” at the time of the communications, the report said.
A friendly reminder: members of Congress have the legal authority to conduct oversight of ICE detention facilities. That’s not up for debate or interpretation, it’s simply the law.
“Many of the deficiencies ICE found in its inspection of Camp East Montana in the first week of September appear to stem from the hasty construction and early opening of the makeshift facility,” The Post continued in its report. “While the largest private prison firms say it can take up to three months just to hire and train enough staff to open a new ICE facility in an existing building, contractors at Fort Bliss have turned an empty patch of desert into one of the nation’s largest ICE holding sites in less than two months. The site is still not complete.”
“Throughout history, Fort Bliss has served not as a place of refuge or justice, but as a staging ground for policies driven by cruelty and exclusion,” the American Civil Liberties Union noted in August, including as an internment camp for Japanese immigrants during WWII. “These everyday business owners, community leaders, teachers, and fathers were labeled as ‘enemy aliens’ not for any wrongdoing, but because the law kept them from becoming naturalized citizens,” said the Japanese American Citizens League. Just this week, the president used the term “the enemy within” to defend deploying U.S. troops against the American people.
Japanese American advocates have rebuked the Fort Bliss camp’s opening, linking the horrors suffered by this community to the masked arrests and deportations separating the families of today. “Entire communities, over 125,000 Japanese Americans, were forcibly removed from the West Coast in 1942 and today our immigrant brothers and sisters face the terror of ICE and CBP raids across the country,” said Japanese American National Museum President Ann Burroughs. “It was a miscarriage of justice then, and it is a miscarriage of justice now.”
The abuses seen at the Fort Bliss camp are in no way isolated. An ongoing investigation led by Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff has revealed more than 500 credible reports of shocking human rights abuses in immigration detention facilities, including dozens of allegations of physical and sexual abuse and the mistreatment of pregnant women and children as young as two, including U.S. citizens.
“Public reports describe at least two 911 calls from the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in California referencing reported sexual assaults or threats of sexual assaults. At the South Texas ICE Processing Center, at least four emergency calls since January have reportedly referenced sexual abuse,” the investigation said. At the El Paso Service Processing Center in Texas, one detained individual was slammed so hard against the ground “for stepping out of line in the dining hall” that guards “reportedly nearly broke his wrists.”
Both the Adelanto ICE Processing Center and the South Texas ICE Processing Center are operated by GEO Group, one of a number of private prisons set to reap massive profits under the administration’s anti-immigrant dragnet. Acquisition Logistics LLC, which PBS reported “has no listed experience running a correction facility and had never won a federal contract worth more than $16 million,” won a more than $1 billion federal contract to build and run the Fort Bliss detention camp.
“The company also lacks a functioning website and lists as its address a modest home in suburban Virginia owned by a 77-year-old retired Navy flight officer,” the report continued.
In Florida, the abusive Everglades detention camp was initially halted under a federal judge’s order this past August but has remained operational following a ruling from an appeals court the following month. Adding to the worries of advocates is that the strategy behind the Everglades camp – which is being largely operated by Florida with a thumbs-up from the federal government – is spreading to other states, HuffPost reports.
“Over the past few weeks, the Everglades jail has been joined by a wave of alliterative additions to the immigration detention system, including the so-called ‘Deportation Depot’ in north Florida, ‘Cornhusker Clink’ in Nebraska, ‘Speedway Slammer’ in Indiana, ‘Lonestar Lockup’ in Texas and the ‘Louisiana Lockup’ in Angola, one of the most infamous prisons in the world,” HuffPost said. The gross attempt at catchy names doesn’t hide the disturbing reality inside these walls. At the Angola detention camp, advocates said cells have been contaminated with feces due to malfunctioning toilets while some detainees have reportedly launched a hunger strike “because they did not have regular access to medication for chronic conditions like diabetes and mental health diagnoses.”
“Research shows that detainees, including pregnant people and children, can receive inadequate care in detention facilities, and that most detention center deaths were associated with ICE violating their own medical standards,” reported KFF. “A study on LGBT detainees found they experienced higher rates of harassment than non-LGBT detainees. Immigrants in detention are increasingly being placed in solitary confinement, which can worsen mental health and tends [to be] more frequently utilized for those with serious mental illness. The suicide rate also significantly increased from 2010-2020 among immigrants in ICE facilities.”
The Fort Bliss camp currently jails about 1,400 immigrants with capacity to detain up to 5,000 individuals. Among them was Ricardo Quintana Chavez, a journalist and asylum-seeker who was detained while working a ceviche stand in Miami Beach, El Paso Matters reports. He was initially detained at the Everglades camp before being moved to Fort Bliss. He corroborated reporting from The Post, “calling the Fort Bliss center’s operation disorganized and chaotic at best.”
“He told El Paso Matters that like him, the majority of detainees were in the dark about their cases and what was to become of them,” the report said. “He said the center only offered Tylenol and ibuprofen and many detainees’ medical records were delayed or lost in the shuffle. While meals and snacks were served, he says they were inadequate and poorly made.”
“But the most unfortunate thing of all this,” he told El Paso Matters following his deportation to Peru after more than 50 days in immigration detention, “is the level of uncertainty in which they hold you because you never know what’s going to happen to you.”
“There is no way that this facility should be operating with their current numbers, let alone expanding,” Michelle Brané, former DHS Immigration Detention Ombudsman under the Biden administration, told The Post. “Once again, El Paso is being used as a hub for cruelty against immigrants,” said Marisa Limón Garza, Executive Director of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center. “Expanding a military base into a site for prolonged family detention and deportation marks a disturbing escalation in the criminalization of immigrants and a blatant disregard for human health and safety, access to counsel and due process.”
“Families seeking safety deserve dignity and fair treatment—not to be warehoused in horrific conditions, in a facility built for war, not care,” she continued.
