Allegations of serious mistreatment have emerged from Camp East Montana, an immigration detention site on the Fort Bliss military installation in Texas. A coalition of civil rights groups claims that detainees face beatings, sexual violence and secret deportations, prompting a call for the camp’s immediate closure.
The 19-page letter—signed by eight organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Watch and the Texas Civil Rights Project—was sent to ICE acting director Todd Lyons and Fort Bliss command, with copies to the DHS inspector general and the Senate armed services committee.
Detention Camp Under Scrutiny
The authors assert that officers at Camp East Montana are “in violation of agency policies and standards, as well as statutory and constitutional protections.” With over 2,700 people held in tented units, the letter urges authorities: “In light of these abuses, we urge the end to detention of immigrants at Fort Bliss.”
ICE officials in El Paso referred inquiries to the Department of Homeland Security, whose assistant secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, responded: “Any claim that there are ‘inhumane’ conditions at ICE detention centers are categorically false. No detainees are being beaten or abused.”
Detainee Testimonies and Conditions
More than 45 sworn declarations describe masked agents forcing asylum seekers to “jump” the barrier on the US-Mexico border under threat of imprisonment. According to the letter, non-Mexican nationals—mainly from Cuba and Guatemala—were shackled, driven to Santa Teresa, New Mexico, and ordered by masked officers to climb into Mexico, bypassing formal deportation procedures.
“The masked people sometimes beat on people to get them to jump the wall even if they don’t want to,” said “Eduardo,” a Cuban detainee identified by pseudonym, who was warned of federal charges if he refused.
Inside the camp, the coalition reports officers employing sexual violence as discipline. “Isaac,” another pseudonymous Cuban national, stated that guards “grabbed and crushed my testicles between their fingers, which was very painful and humiliating.” A teenager, “Samuel,” described one officer who “grabbed my testicles and firmly crushed them,” while another “forced his fingers deep into my ears,” before he was beaten unconscious and required hospitalization for broken teeth and testicular trauma.
Sanitation in the 72-person tents is reportedly dire, with frequent sewage overflows flooding living and dining areas. Detainees say they have had to use their own clothing to clean up due to a lack of supplies. The letter also details medical neglect—diabetics deprived of insulin, hypertensive patients ignored until severe episodes—and “fist-sized” food portions that are often spoiled, causing rapid weight loss.
McLaughlin told the Guardian that detainees receive full legal access, hygiene facilities and dietitian-certified meals, plus “comprehensive medical attention that exceeds what many migrants have previously experienced.”
The letter was first reported by the Washington Post, which said it had reviewed internal ICE records confirming that four Cubans resisted removal on relevant dates.
Eunice Hyunhye Cho, senior counsel at the ACLU National Prison Project, warned that minimal oversight and restricted external contact have created “a recipe for humanitarian disaster.” “Placing thousands of people in tent camps in the middle of the desert, in a military base, without adequate staffing was a recipe for humanitarian disaster,” she said. “Although shocking, but not surprising, this nightmare has come true.”
El Paso Congresswoman Veronica Escobar has demanded transparency from DHS after being told of “dangerous and inhumane” conditions at the detention facility, which she described as a “public health hazard.”