FORT BLISS, TX - JANUARY 23, 2025: (EDITOR'S NOTE: This Handout image was provided by a third-party organization and may not adhere to Getty Images' editorial policy.) In this handout provided by the U.S. Department of Defense, illegal immigrants prepare to board a C-17 Globemaster III assigned to the 60th Air Mobility Wing for a removal flight at Fort Bliss, Texas, on Jan. 23, 2025. Under the direction of U.S. Northern Command, U.S. Transportation Command is supporting Immigration and Customs Enforcement removal flights by providing military airlift.
Dept. of Defense photo by U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Nicholas J. De La Pena
Almost everyone interviewed for a new investigation into the country's biggest immigration lockup told researchers the same thing: they were hit by a guard, or they watched a guard hit someone else. That's the central finding of an 84-page report released July 15 by Human Rights Watch and the ACLU, and it lands on top of nearly a year of prior warnings about Camp East Montana, the tent complex the government built on the Army's Fort Bliss post outside El Paso.
Inside the Investigation
Researchers spent roughly eight months, from October 2025 through June 2026, interviewing 71 people held at the camp along with several of their relatives and a handful of immigration lawyers, according to the Texas Tribune's account of the report. Sixty-four of those 71 detainees — roughly nine out of ten — said they had either been struck themselves or had seen someone else assaulted by staff. Beyond the violence, people described being cut off from prescribed medicine, kept inside without fresh air for weeks at a stretch, and served food that arrived spoiled or half-cooked on no fixed timetable.
Lead researcher Angélica César did not mince words, calling the facility "a human rights disaster" and pressing Washington to shutter it while opening an independent probe into the deaths and mistreatment documented inside. The camp opened its gates in August 2025 and is designed to eventually hold 5,000 people across five oversized canvas tents, each broken into pods of around 70 detainees, according to Reason's coverage. One man told investigators a guard warned him early in his stay that the only two ways out were removal from the country or a body bag — a line so stark that Human Rights Watch made it the report's title.
Fort Bliss ICE facility in Texas
ACLU's official website
When Detainees Complain, Guards Respond With Force
The interviews describe a consistent cycle: detainees launch a hunger strike, ask for medical attention, or gripe about food, and guards answer by flooding into the pod. Witnesses told researchers the guards arrived in packs of roughly 10 to 20, masked, and struck whoever was closest — sometimes people who'd never lodged a complaint at all. One detainee described the scene to Reason, saying "the guards run into our pod in groups of 15, sometimes it looks like 20." Multiple interviewees called it collective punishment: break a rule and everyone in the pod pays for it, including people confined for weeks with no yard time who dared to ask why.
This is far from the first time these claims have surfaced. Four detainees, backed by the ACLU of Texas and other legal groups, sued the facility's operators in late May, asking a judge to shut the camp down until it meets federal detention standards. The Texas Tribune's reporting on that lawsuit notes the petition sought class-action status covering everyone currently or later held there, and accused guards of using unnecessary force alongside neglecting medical needs.
Three Deaths, and a Disputed Account of the Second
At least three people have died at Camp East Montana since it opened, and the order of those deaths matters for understanding how the story has evolved. The first was Francisco Gaspar-Andres, a 48-year-old Guatemalan man who spent roughly two months in custody before being hospitalized and dying on December 3, 2025; ICE attributed his death to liver and kidney failure, according to NBC News.
The second, and most contested, death is that of Geraldo Lunas Campos, a 55-year-old Cuban migrant who died January 3, 2026. Detainees told Human Rights Watch and the ACLU he was heard saying he could not breathe while guards held him down outside a solitary confinement cell. DHS's own account differs sharply: the agency has said Lunas Campos was attempting self-harm and that staff were trying to save his life when he lost consciousness during the struggle, per a KFOX report on a subsequent wrongful-death lawsuit filed by his family. The El Paso County Medical Examiner's Office ultimately ruled the death a homicide, and a federal watchdog report released in June found that evidence tied to the case had gone missing or been destroyed.
The third death, on January 14, was Victor Manuel Diaz, a 36-year-old Nicaraguan man arrested in Minneapolis and transferred to the camp just over a week earlier. ICE has labeled his death a presumed suicide, though El Paso Matters reported his body was sent to an Army hospital rather than the county medical examiner, and the official cause remains listed as pending.
A Rushed Build, an Untested Contractor
Much of what's gone wrong traces back to how the camp came together in the first place. Last summer the Army handed a contract, reported by the Associated Press at up to $1.3 billion, to Acquisition Logistics LLC — a small Virginia firm whose biggest prior federal job had topped out around $16 million and which had never previously run a detention facility. By spring, ICE had cut ties with that company and brought in Amentum Services to take over, a switch followed multiple deaths and a Washington Post story suggesting the camp might close entirely. The replacement wasn't exactly a clean slate, either — Scripps News found the new operator carried its own history of federal violations.
Around the same time, the Government Accountability Office released an audit concluding the Army had wasted millions of dollars by paying full price for meals and services during a two-week stretch in August 2025 when the facility held zero detainees — and that ICE could have saved tens of millions more with basic fixes like tiered pricing. That same audit confirmed the missing evidence in the Lunas Campos case and noted the facility opened without required perimeter cameras, outdoor recreation space, or room for legal visits. A separate compliance inspection by ICE's own Office of Detention Oversight, conducted in February 2026, tallied 49 distinct violations — a figure reported alongside the GAO findings by NPR but generated by a different, internal ICE review rather than by GAO auditors themselves. Despite the change in contractors, Human Rights Watch says its interviews conducted as recently as June turned up the same problems.
Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX)
Photo by Jim Vondruska/Getty Images
Washington's Response
DHS did in fact respond to this specific report — a spokesperson told the El Paso station KVIA the same day the report came out that the allegations were completely false, that detainees get proper food, medical care and lawyer access, and flatly stated that no one is being beaten or abused there. Months earlier, when a different contractor swap made headlines, an ICE spokesperson offered a similar message to Fox News and other outlets, saying "far from closing, Camp East Montana is upgrading."
Not everyone in Congress is buying it. Rep. Veronica Escobar, the El Paso Democrat whose district includes the camp, says the new findings confirm concerns she's raised since the facility opened. New Mexico Rep. Gabe Vasquez toured the site himself in April and has been pushing his Humane Accountability Act, which would force DHS to publicly disclose detention and death-in-custody data. Both lawmakers want the camp closed outright. Between the pending lawsuit, congressional oversight visits, and now this latest report, the pressure on the administration to explain conditions at Fort Bliss isn't easing up anytime soon.
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