On an Army base outside El Paso sits the largest immigration detention facility in American history: five tents, 5,000 beds, 72 people to a pen. It was built on a $1.3 billion no-experience contract. In its first year: at least 60 federal violations in 50 days, tuberculosis and measles outbreaks, three deaths — one ruled a homicide by autopsy — and a GAO finding that evidence in a death investigation was destroyed. Human Rights Watch and the ACLU spent nine months inside the story. Their report title is a quote from a detainee. You paid for every tent.
Camp East Montana opened on August 1, 2025, to serve the administration's mass deportation program, which requires roughly doubling the nation's detention capacity. The build-and-operate contract — $1.3 billion, with a financial ceiling of roughly $2.7 billion — went to Acquisition Logistics LLC, a firm with no prior civilian detention experience. A DHS spokesperson later told NBC News the contract "was inherited" from the Defense Department, and that DHS was reviewing both the facility and the deal.
The review did not close the camp. Instead, on March 13, 2026, Amentum Services — a multibillion-dollar global defense contractor — took over operations after months of questions about whether Acquisition Logistics was meeting standards. Human Rights Watch and the ACLU, in their July 2026 report, describe the swap bluntly: the contractor change "protected profits while keeping the detention system active."
Camp East Montana is the flagship of a much bigger program. The July 2025 reconciliation law (H.R. 1, 119th Congress) appropriated roughly $45 billion for ICE detention through 2029, alongside about $29.9 billion for enforcement and operations — the largest detention expansion in US history. For scale on this site: the detention appropriation alone is 30 times the entire ten-year Ocean Observatories Initiative, 45 times the National Park Service cut Congress rejected, and 72 times the Pentagon's Vulcan loan. Five thousand beds in a desert is what the first $1.3 billion bought.
Nationwide, 25 people died in ICE custody between October 2025 and early April 2026 — a record pace, per NPR's reporting. Three of them were held at this one facility. NPR's April investigation also reported allegations from inside the camp that guards were betting on which detainee would die next. The GAO's June report found that evidence connected to a detainee death investigation at the facility had been destroyed or lost.
| Investigator | Finding | When |
|---|---|---|
| ICE detention oversight unit | At least 60 federal standards violated in the camp's first 50 days | Fall 2025 |
| Federal inspectors | 49 violations including undocumented suicide-prevention checks and inadequate medical care | Feb 2026 |
| ICE internal investigation | Unreported uses of force · medical neglect · missed suicide/wellness checks · inadequate sexual-abuse prevention · unanswered grievances · systemic failure to process requests for help | Apr 2026 |
| GAO (federal watchdog) | Millions of dollars wasted · detainee health endangered · destruction or loss of evidence in a death investigation | Jun 2026 |
| HRW / ACLU — 84-page report | "You're Only Getting Out Deported or Dead": 80 interviews (71 detained) Oct 2025–Jun 2026 documenting the conditions below | Jul 15, 2026 |
Inside the pods: flooded cells, bathrooms covered in feces, no soap or basic hygiene supplies, spoiled or frozen food, and being kept indoors for weeks at a time without seeing the sun — sensory deprivation one detainee called "torture." The camp has experienced tuberculosis and measles outbreaks.
How they got there: arrests by masked officers who refused to identify themselves during workplace raids, traffic stops, and immigration appointments — with beatings and tasers alleged. More than 60 of the 80 people interviewed said they were arrested despite showing documents proving lawful presence in the United States. Many said they felt "kidnapped," moved through jails and holding sites without being able to reach their families.
The disappearance problem: the report found ICE's locator systems hid detainees from their families — a practice the organizations say implicates laws against enforced disappearance.
"ICE's Camp East Montana is a human rights disaster. The US government should shut it down, conduct independent investigations into all abuses and deaths in custody, and put an end to mass deportations and mandatory immigration detention."
— Angélica César · Aryeh Neier Fellow, Human Rights Watch & ACLU · July 15, 2026Legal organizations — the ACLU, ACLU of New Mexico, Estrella del Paso, Las Americas, the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center, and others — sent detailed warning letters to the federal government in December 2025 and again in May 2026, then filed suit over conditions at the camp. ICE's Performance-Based National Detention Standards state that civil immigration detention is meant to be non-punitive. Every finding above describes the opposite.
US-born children deported to Haiti. A second deportation flight in a single week carried US-born children to Haiti — a country the State Department has warned Americans not to travel to. These are US citizens by birth, removed with deported parents.
Springfield, Ohio. ICE has stepped up raids on the Haitian community in Springfield — the same community that became a target of national political rhetoric in 2024. Most of its members hold legal status.
The agent who walked. An ICE agent charged with shooting a Venezuelan man in Minnesota walked free from a Texas jail. The pattern this page documents — force used, accountability deferred — is not confined to the camp.
Camp East Montana is the destination at the end of these operations. The detention buildout funded by the July 2025 reconciliation law — roughly $45 billion through 2029 — is what makes the volume possible.
The tents of Camp East Montana are pitched on ground with a history. During World War II, Fort Bliss was one of several Texas military bases used to incarcerate people of Japanese descent, along with some German and Italian immigrants. In 2021, under President Biden, the base was used to detain unaccompanied children who arrived at the border — and government investigators found the treatment children endured there hindered their case management and harmed their safety and well-being.
Three administrations. Three eras. The same base, the same tents, the same after-the-fact investigations. The pattern is the point: emergency detention on military ground, outside normal oversight, has never once produced a record anyone defends later. This time it came with a $1.3 billion invoice and an autopsy that says homicide.
What is Camp East Montana? The largest immigration detention facility in the US — a soft-sided tent camp at Fort Bliss, El Paso, opened August 1, 2025. Capacity 5,000, held in five tents at up to 72 people per penned pod; roughly 3,000 were held there as of mid-February 2026.
Who runs it? Initially Acquisition Logistics LLC — no prior detention experience — on a $1.3B contract (ceiling ~$2.7B) DHS says was inherited from the Defense Department. Amentum Services took over March 13, 2026.
How many people have died there? Three in the first year: Francisco Gaspar-Andres (Dec 3), Gerardo Lunas Campos (Jan 3 — autopsy ruled homicide by asphyxia; witnesses say guards beat him after he asked for medication), and Victor Manuel Diaz (Jan 14 — DHS says suicide; his family disputes it). Nationwide ICE custody deaths since October: 25, a record pace.
What did the GAO find? Millions wasted, detainee health endangered, and destruction or loss of evidence in a death investigation — on top of ICE's own findings of 60+ violations in 50 days and an April internal investigation documenting unreported force and medical neglect.
What does it cost taxpayers? $1.3B initial, ~$2.7B ceiling — inside a $45B ICE detention appropriation through 2029 passed in the July 2025 reconciliation law.
Every finding above is drawn from a named institutional source: ICE's own oversight unit, federal inspectors, ICE's internal investigation, the GAO, the final autopsy, and the HRW/ACLU report. Witness accounts of the Lunas Campos death are presented as witness accounts. DHS's positions — "inherited" contract, review underway, suicide determination — are included where stated. Amentum and Acquisition Logistics did not respond to NBC's requests for comment; if any party responds to the record above, this page will carry it.
No detention contracts. No defense money. Reader-funded accountability reporting.