ICE Detention Center Contractors Host a Hotbed of Legal Problems, Regulatory Violations and Deadly Conditions

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has contracted with two troubled companies to build and operate a massive new billion-dollar ICE detention center in Texas. One company, Acquisition Logistics LLC, fired by DHS last month, was never registered to operate in Texas, and the new company, Amentum Services Inc. has a history of health and safety, and other violations of federal law according to a new Public Citizen report titled Billion Dollar Collapse: The Anatomy and Failure of an ICE Detention Center Contract, authored by researcher Douglas Pasternak.

The Trump administration first awarded a $1.3 billion contract to construct and operate Camp East Montana in El Paso, TX at Ft. Bliss to Acquisition Logistics LLC, a company with no prior experience constructing or operating a detention facility. The contract has a financial ceiling of $2.7 billion. The 5,000-person facility is being built in the same location that housed Japanese-Americans in internment camps during World War II, and its construction has been condemned by Japanese-American and other groups. One subcontractor employee died at the site just two days after the contract was first awarded. Since then, three detainees have died and one of those deaths was ruled a homicide by the local coroner. Eight months after the contract was first awarded in July 2025, due to a litany of these lethal and other problems, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) replaced Acquisition Logistics with Amentum Services, Inc.

Amentum Services, received a no-bid, sole-sourced contract last month to provide management of the facility, including housing, transportation and medical care. However, Amentum and its affiliated companies have been cited and fined for 112 regulatory violations over the years including fraud, employment discrimination, and one dozen health and safety violations over the past six years.

Public Citizen Researcher Douglas Pasternak, who authored the report, said the Trump administration is awarding large contracts to businesses with little prior experience, as well as to more well-established corporations with dubious records, setting off alarm bells about how taxpayer funds are being spent and how these detainees are being treated.

“This is not just about corporate negligence and government mismanagement, it’s about human lives, literally. Every American should be deeply concerned,” said Pasternak. “The Trump administration is doling out billions of dollars in taxpayer funds on contracts that have led to the death of four people in a six-month period. And things are not likely to improve. The new contractor has a history of health and safety violations, including a 2023 incident that involved the potential exposure of workers at the CIA’s headquarters in Virginia to a toxic chemical, and the death of a worker in 2024 at Fort Belvoir. None of that bodes well for the 5,000 immigrant detainees the Trump administration hopes to house at the Camp East Montana detention center in Texas.”

Upcoming ICE detention protests: On Saturday, April 25th, communities across the country will come together for the Communities Not Cages National Day of Action — a coordinated, nationwide mobilization against the Trump administration’s reckless expansion of ICE warehouse detention and its assault on the due process rights of immigrants and all Americans. Public Citizen is a lead partner of Disappeared in America, a campaign organized by the Not Above the Law coalition.