Legal filings reveal systemic failures at Camp East Montana, where detainees allege physical abuse, medical neglect, and disease outbreaks at the largest U.S. immigration detention facility.
New court documents paint a disturbing picture of life inside Camp East Montana, the sprawling tent city erected on the Fort Bliss military base in West Texas. Attorneys representing detained immigrants have filed a class-action lawsuit accusing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of maintaining conditions that violate basic human rights and constitutional protections.
Expert Testimony Warns of Preventable Deaths
Two seasoned corrections and healthcare professionals have submitted harrowing testimony about the facility’s conditions. Dean Williams, a former administrator of two state prison systems, described conditions that “shock the conscience” and exceed even the most secure criminal facilities he has overseen. Unlike those prisons, Camp East Montana houses primarily civil detainees—many without criminal records—who are being held indefinitely while their immigration cases proceed.
Dr. Jeffrey Keller, who has managed healthcare programmes across nine states, echoed these concerns, stating that “poor healthcare and unsafe conditions at Camp East Montana have resulted in preventable death and put all people at risk of harm, including serious injury and death.”
The lawsuit, filed in May 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, represents the first legal challenge specifically targeting Camp East Montana. The facility opened in August 2025 as part of the second Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement strategy, quickly becoming the nation’s largest immigration detention centre.
Detainee Accounts Reveal Systematic Neglect
Inside accounts from those currently held at the facility describe a pattern of abuse and inadequate care. One unnamed detainee told attorneys, “I am dying of hunger here. I throw up frequently after eating. I am a skeleton of the person I was before. Any day now, I think I will die here.”
The filing details numerous allegations: guards regularly using excessive force against detainees, verbal abuse including racial and homophobic slurs, and deliberate withholding of medical treatment. One detainee, Gerald Akari Angye, suffered a fractured spine and wrist allegedly at the hands of facility staff.
Medical care, when provided, often takes place in public hallways or during nighttime hours when detainees should be sleeping. In one particularly disturbing incident, attorneys allege a nurse instructed someone to self-harm if they wanted to stop requesting help.
Disease outbreaks have become commonplace. More than a dozen people contracted measles in February and March 2026, leading to mass quarantines affecting hundreds. In November, an individual with active tuberculosis was reportedly housed within the general population, despite the highly contagious nature of the disease.
Contractor Changes Follow Multiple Custody Deaths
The facility’s management has changed hands twice since its opening, following three detainee deaths in ICE custody. In March 2026, the Department of Defense transferred operations from one Virginia-based contractor to Amentum Services, Inc., another private company with ties to defence contracting.
One particularly tragic case involved a detainee whose daughter witnessed his condition during a final video call. “It was like he was drowning in his own blood,” she reported. His personal physician later stated that detention staff delayed hospital transport until the last possible moment.
Despite repeated warnings from internal oversight bodies, conditions appear to have deteriorated rather than improved. The Office of Detention Oversight identified Camp East Montana as having “among the highest number of violations in a single report of any facility” inspected, according to nonprofit news organisation Pogo Investigates.
Early monitoring reports revealed dozens of immediate concerns, including a lost, loaded firearm discovered on-site, unsanitary conditions, and significant gaps in medical services. The Pentagon flagged at least 22 violations related to food service, safety, and hygiene during the facility’s first week of operation.
Basic Sanitation and Dignity Remain Elusive
Attorneys describe a facility where fundamental necessities are treated as luxuries. Soap is reportedly unavailable, forcing detainees to ration shampoo containers the size of single-use ketchup packets—still insufficient for proper handwashing before meals or after bathroom use.
Nail clippers are withheld from housing units, with guards allegedly suggesting detainees bite their own nails if they wish to maintain them. Toenails, too, receive the same cruel advice: “If you can bite them, bite them.”
Environmental conditions compound the humanitarian crisis. Rain, rocks, mice, and insects regularly infiltrate living areas. Toilets frequently clog and overflow without timely repair, creating pervasive odors of urine, faeces, and body odour throughout the compound.
These conditions, attorneys argue, serve no legitimate governmental purpose and represent a systematic failure of oversight and accountability at every level of the immigration detention system.
Why it Matters
The revelations emerging from Camp East Montana represent more than isolated operational failures—they expose fundamental questions about America’s approach to immigration enforcement and the treatment of vulnerable populations. As the largest immigration detention facility in the nation, its conditions set precedents that echo across the entire system. The allegations of systematic abuse, medical neglect, and deliberate indifference to human dignity challenge core American values regarding due process and humane treatment under the law. With midterm elections approaching in November 2026, these revelations place additional pressure on policymakers to confront the real-world consequences of increasingly hardline immigration policies. The outcome of this lawsuit could determine not just the fate of one remote desert facility, but the future direction of immigration detention policy nationwide.
