ICE Sued Over 'Civil Rights Catastrophe' at West Texas Concentration Camp

A group of legal advocacy groups on Friday sued US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies and officials over "inhumane" conditions at the country's largest concentration camp for immigrants detained during the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign.

The American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Texas, Texas Civil Rights Project, Human Rights Watch, and the law firm Farella Braun + Martel LLP filed suit against ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense, and associated officials, in the US District Court for the Western District of Texas in El Paso.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of four people seeking to represent a class action for all others held at Camp East Montana, a 60-acre facility located in the Chihuahuan Desert on the grounds of Fort Bliss, an Army base and the site of one of the concentration camps where Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals were imprisoned during World War II. Approximately 2,500 immigrants are being detained there.

The lawsuit documents accounts of what the ACLU called "horrific rights violations" at the facility, including:

• Severe medical neglect and disease outbreaks, including a months-long measles outbreak that infected at least 14 people;
• Violent uses of force by officers against detained immigrants and coercive threats of deportation;
• Excessive and arbitrary use of solitary confinement to punish people for requesting basic needs like medical care or hygiene;
• Inadequate and rancid food that have caused detained people to lose extreme amounts of weight;
• Exposure to dust storms through openings in tent walls that subjects people to respiratory disease; and
• Dangerous and unsanitary living conditions in the tent camp, among other rights violations.

“These conditions are longstanding, pervasive, and well-documented, and defendants’ continued inaction in the face of known risks shows their deliberate indifference—not mere negligence—to detainees’ constitutional rights,” the lawsuit states.

At least three detainees have died at Camp East Montana, including Geraldo Lunas Campos, a 55-year-old Cuban who, according to witnesses, died after being handcuffed and placed in a chokehold by guards. The El Paso County Medical Examiner's Office ruled Lunas Campos' death a homicide by asphyxia.

Detained immigrants have reported beatings and sexual abuse, medical neglect, hunger and insufficient food, and denial of access to attorneys at the facility.

“The conditions here in this ICE tent camp in a desert are inhumane and cruel. No human being should ever have to go through this," case plaintiff Gerald Akari Angye said in a statement Friday.

I have already experienced torture in my home country of Cameroon and I never thought I would experience such severely violent treatment by guards here in the United States of America," he continued. "I have been beaten here and even today, I still have a brace on my hands and wrist. I am in pain and I am scared to be here."

"No one deserves such cruel treatment," Akari Angye added. "We are all humans and deserve to be treated like it.”

Kyle Virgien, senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s National Prison Project, called Camp East Montana "nothing short of a civil rights catastrophe."

“Since the day it opened, the facility has repeatedly made headlines for horrific rights violations and even the deaths of three detained people, yet ICE has still evaded accountability for its conduct," Virgien added. "We’re suing to ensure that no other human being has to endure the inhumane treatment that the Trump administration has inflicted on our clients.”

Another case plaintiff, named in the suit as Navdeep, said, "It feels like we are just political pawns taken from our jobs and families and forced into a temporary tent that is not designed for human life."

“We could die here, and it feels like no one here would care," they continued. "With everything happening behind closed doors, I worry the people running this place might cover up the truth about a death or the other injustices that happen here."

"It’s important for people to know the truth of what is happening here," Navdeep added. "Being part of this lawsuit is important to me because many people are vulnerable or they become weak because of the conditions here. Even though we come from many different places, we are all human. I want to be a voice for everyone here.”

After receiving "numerous credible reports of torture, killing, and inhumane treatment" of detainees, 35 Democratic Texas state lawmakers earlier this year demand a probe into alleged abuses at Camp East Montana.

Democratic members of US Congress have also sounded the alarm over conditions at Camp East Montana. Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) has also called out profiteering by the private contractors running the camp.

Amentum Services Inc. took over operations from Acquisition Logistics LLC earlier this year. The latter was never registered to operate in Texas and the former "has a history of health, safety, and other violations of federal law," according to the consumer advocacy watchdog Public Citizen.

The Trump administration is currently moving forward with a plan to convert industrial warehouses into more ICE concentration camps. The agency has already purchased or contracted for at least 11 warehouses in eight states as part of the $38 billion plan.

While some critics take exception to the concentration camp description, the ICE facilities fit the dictionary definition of the term. The US has a long history of operating concentration camps, with imprisoned peoples ranging from Indigenous tribes during the Trail of Tears and Long Walk to escaped and freed slaves—officially called "contraband" in the Civil War—to Filipinos, Okinawans, and Vietnamese during three different 20th century wars, to Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals during World War II.

“Germany’s concentration camps didn’t start as instruments of mass murder, and neither have ours; both started as facilities for people the government’s leader said were a problem," talk show host and author Thom Hartmann wrote earlier this year for Common Dreams. "And that’s exactly what ICE is building now. History isn’t whispering its warning: It’s shouting.”