The largest immigration detention center in the United States is being shut down less than eight months after it opened. Here’s what happened inside — and what comes next.
The $1.2 Billion Experiment Is Over
The Washington Post reported that ICE is moving to close Camp East Montana, the massive tent detention camp it built last summer on the grounds of the Fort Bliss Army base near El Paso, Texas. An internal ICE document distributed to agency staff in early March 2026 revealed that the agency is drafting a letter to terminate its contract with the facility’s operator, Acquisition Logistics LLC — a small Virginia company with no prior experience running detention facilities that was awarded a $1.2 billion contract in July 2025, with a projected completion date of September 2027.
The Department of Homeland Security issued a cautious statement saying it is “reviewing” the facility to ensure it meets standards, and that “no decisions have been made related to contract extension, termination, or award.” But the internal document tells a different story.
The closure — if confirmed — would mark the end of a deeply troubled experiment in large-scale, rapid-build detention. From the moment it opened, Camp East Montana was plagued by abuse allegations, medical neglect, federal violations and, ultimately, death.
What Was Camp East Montana?
Built in a matter of weeks on a formerly empty stretch of Chihuahuan Desert adjacent to Fort Bliss, Camp East Montana was conceived as the model for a new generation of temporary, fast-deployable detention facilities the Trump administration planned to build across the country. It was designed to hold up to 5,000 people at a time — making it, according to the ACLU, the largest immigration detention center in the United States.
The site sits on land with a dark history: it was previously used as an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II.
When the first detainees arrived on August 1, 2025, they were moved into an active construction zone. Dust rose from ongoing excavation. Contractors were still finishing the facility around them. Inside, detainees live in enormous white tents — each roughly the length of two football fields — divided into open-top pods housing up to 72 people each. Because there are no ceilings separating the pods, the noise from hundreds of people fills the space around the clock.
The facility was designed to hold people “for periods of approximately two weeks or less” prior to deportation or release. Internal ICE records show that many detainees have been there for months.
The Problems Began Immediately
By September 2025, just weeks after opening, ICE’s own internal inspection unit found that Camp East Montana had violated at least 60 federal detention standards. The report found the facility lacked basic safety procedures, failed to give many detainees access to legal counsel for weeks, and did not properly process medical intakes — meaning the medical team could not identify existing chronic conditions, mental illness, or risks of self-harm among the population in its care.
In November and December 2025, investigators from the ACLU and other human rights organizations conducted site visits and gathered sworn declarations from detainees. Their findings were damning: beatings by guards for complaining or demanding medical attention, sexual abuse, chronic food shortages, denial of attorney access and threats of illegal removal to Mexico. More than 45 detainees alleged abuse and serious injuries in a letter sent to DHS and ICE supervisors. Among the cases described was a teenager who was hospitalized after guards allegedly slammed him to the ground.
“There is always the risk of retaliation here for trying to ask for our rights to be respected,” one 35-year-old Cuban detainee stated in a sworn declaration.
Three Deaths in Six Weeks
The most devastating consequence of conditions at Camp East Montana was the deaths of three men in the span of 44 days.
On December 3, 2025, Francisco Gaspar-Andres, 48, a Guatemalan man who had been ill for months while in custody, died at a hospital in El Paso. ICE attributed his death to natural liver and kidney failure.
On January 3, 2026, Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55, a Cuban detainee, died after an altercation with guards. ICE initially described his death as the result of “medical distress,” then later said staff had intervened during an attempted suicide. But the El Paso County Medical Examiner ruled the death a homicide, determining that Lunas Campos died of asphyxia due to compression of his neck and chest. A detainee who witnessed the incident told the Washington Post that Lunas Campos had been choked to death by guards. It was the first homicide ruling linked to ICE staff in at least 15 years. Witnesses were subsequently blocked from receiving visitors at the facility.
On January 14, 2026, Víctor Manuel Díaz, 36, a Nicaraguan man originally detained in Minneapolis, was found unresponsive in his room and could not be revived. ICE described his death as an apparent suicide. Unlike the previous two cases, his body was transferred to a federal military medical center — not the local county medical examiner — raising concerns among advocates about the independence of the investigation.
In response to the three deaths, 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 — issued a formal statement demanding closure of the facility.
What ICE and DHS Said
Throughout the crisis, DHS maintained that the facility met high standards and that its response to detainee deaths was appropriate. In the case of Lunas Campos, Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said he had tried to take his own life and that guards were attempting to save him. “Campos violently resisted the security staff and continued to attempt to take his life,” McLaughlin said. “During the ensuing struggle, Campos stopped breathing and lost consciousness.” The medical examiner’s homicide ruling directly contradicted this account.
DHS has characterized the federal judges who have blocked aspects of its detention policies as “activist judges” obstructing the president’s deportation agenda.
The Bigger Picture: More Facilities Are Coming
The closure of Camp East Montana does not signal a retreat from mass detention. Quite the opposite.
Even as it moves to shut down the Fort Bliss camp, the Department of Homeland Security has unveiled a new $38 billion plan to purchase and retrofit industrial warehouses into detention centers, some capable of holding up to 10,000 people at a time. DHS has already purchased ten buildings for this purpose — including a large distribution center just 15 miles south of Camp East Montana.
State and local officials in communities targeted for the warehouse detention centers have raised many of the same concerns that defined Camp East Montana: too big, too rushed, and not equipped to meet basic standards of care. At least 30 people died in ICE detention in 2025 — the highest toll in two decades — and at least nine detainees have already died in 2026.
The Response From El Paso
Rep. Veronica Escobar, who represents El Paso and has visited Camp East Montana numerous times, called it “the epitome of fraud, waste, and abuse” and said the Trump administration had used her city as “ground zero for its sick, twisted immigration enforcement policies.”
“Camp East Montana should have never opened,” Escobar said. “The $1.24 billion cost for this facility could have been used for healthcare, nutrition programs, and a litany of other things to improve our society and our country. Instead, it promoted the dehumanization of immigrants and lined the pockets of a corrupt, incompetent private prison corporation.”
At vigils held outside the Fort Bliss gates, El Paso residents gathered to mourn the men who died in custody. “I am so shocked at what’s happening in our country,” said one attendee. “This is an international city, which has always loved immigrants before, and we treat them so badly. It’s heartbreaking.”
Sources
- Douglas MacMillan, ICE Taking Steps to Close Detention Center at Fort Bliss, Document Shows, The Washington Post, March 4, 2026. https://www.washingtonpost.com
- Ayden Runnels and Lomi Kriel, ICE Moving Toward Closing El Paso Detention Camp, The Texas Tribune, March 4, 2026. https://www.texastribune.org
- Lomi Kriel, Colleen DeGuzman and Apurva Mahajan, What You Need to Know About Texas ICE Detention Deaths, The Texas Tribune, February 19, 2026. https://www.texastribune.org
- Third Immigrant Detainee at Facility in El Paso Has Died, ICE Says, NBC News, January 19, 2026. https://www.nbcnews.com
- After Detainee’s Death, Visitors Blocked From Seeing Minnesota Immigrants Held at Fort Bliss, El Paso Matters, January 18, 2026. https://elpasomatters.org
- Immigrant Deaths Intensify Scrutiny of Detention Camp as El Paso Becomes Deportation Hub, KTEP/NPR El Paso, January 23, 2026. https://www.ktep.org
- 911 Calls Reveal Overcrowding, Medical Neglect and Death at ICE’s Largest Detention Center, Associated Press / Here & Now, NPR, March 10, 2026. https://www.wbur.org
- Camp East Montana, Wikipedia (Spanish). https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_East_Montana
