Camp East Montana: Beatings, Medical Neglect and Deaths at the ICE Tent Camp on Fort Bliss

What Happened

Camp East Montana is an ICE detention camp built inside the Fort Bliss Army base in El Paso, Texas. It can hold up to 5,000 people in penned enclosures within five tent-like structures, with up to 72 people per pod, which makes it the largest immigration detention facility in the United States (HRW/ACLU). The Texas Tribune describes it as a facility that was "supposed to be a model for how the Trump administration would carry out mass deportations."

The HRW/ACLU Report

On July 15, 2026, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union published "'You're Only Getting Out Deported or Dead': Abusive US Immigration Detention at Ft. Bliss," an 84-page report based on interviews with 80 people between October 2025 and June 2026: 71 people detained at the camp, four family members and five legal service providers. Its documented findings include:

• Beatings and collective punishment. Detainees described beatings by masked, unidentified guards in response to hunger strikes, requests for medical attention, complaints about conditions and requests for outdoor recreation. Several said guards struck or assaulted multiple people after accusing one person of breaking a rule.
• Medical neglect and retaliation against detainees who sought care.
• Degrading conditions: feces-covered bathrooms, flooded units, meals delayed by up to 12 hours, and outdoor recreation limited to about 15 minutes once every two weeks.
• Coercive removals to unfamiliar third countries, and isolation from family and counsel that, in some cases, HRW concludes "amounted to enforced disappearance under international human rights law."
• Unlawful arrests: JURIST reports that more than 60 of the people interviewed said they had been arrested despite having documentation of lawful presence.

The report cites ICE's own findings. According to HRW, an ICE inspection conducted February 10-12, 2026 documented "impermissible and unreported uses of force" at the camp, and the report describes an April 2026 internal investigation that identified unreported uses of force, medical neglect, failures to conduct required suicide and wellness checks, inadequate sexual abuse prevention measures and unanswered grievances. It calls for closing the camp, for independent investigations into deaths, excessive force and medical neglect, and for accountability for responsible officials. "ICE's Camp East Montana is a human rights disaster. The US government should shut it down," said Angélica César of Human Rights Watch and the ACLU.

DHS, the Department of Defense and the facility's contractors did not respond to requests for comment before publication (JURIST). DHS later told NPR that "inhumane conditions at Camp East Montana are categorically false. No detainees are being beaten or abused."

The Deaths

According to the Texas Tribune, three men died after being held at the camp between December 2025 and January 2026:

1. Francisco Gaspar-Andres, 48, of Guatemala, died on December 3, 2025, of liver and kidney failure.
2. Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55, of Cuba, died on January 3, 2026. The medical examiner ruled his death a homicide by "asphyxia due to neck and torso compression." According to the autopsy, he became "unresponsive while being physically restrained by law enforcement." ICE first said he died after "experiencing medical distress" and later said he had attempted suicide (Texas Tribune). Witnesses interviewed by HRW and the ACLU said he had asked for medication while in solitary confinement and that guards apparently asphyxiated him. One said: "He said: 'I can't breathe!' many times."
3. Victor Manuel Díaz, 36, of Nicaragua, was found unresponsive with fabric around his neck in mid-January 2026. His autopsy has not been made public.

ProPublica obtained the medical examiner's nearly 300-page investigative file on Lunas Campos. It shows that he complained at least eight times about skipped or late doses of antipsychotic medication. Staff dismissed an earlier suicide attempt as a "suicidal gesture made to force security staff to release him." Transfer to a higher level of care was discussed starting October 8, but he remained at the camp for more than 100 days. His three adult children have sued the companies that run the facility, and ProPublica reports the companies did not respond.

911 Calls

On September 1, 2026, the Texas Tribune published recordings from more than 160 emergency calls placed from the camp that it obtained through public records requests. They include calls about a detainee with suicidal thoughts who had swallowed a foreign object, a COVID-19 patient without enough oxygen, and an overdose. DHS told the paper the camp provides "comprehensive medical services."

Legal Analysis

Immigration detention is civil, not criminal. Under the Fifth Amendment, people held for immigration purposes may not be punished at all, so beatings, collective punishment and denial of medical care are unlawful whatever the detainee's immigration status. Internationally, Article 16 of the Convention Against Torture requires the United States to prevent cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment in places it controls, and Articles 6 and 10 of the ICCPR impose a heightened duty to protect the life and dignity of people in state custody. A death ruled a homicide by asphyxia, following documented restraint by guards, engages that duty directly.

The evidence here does not rest on detainee accounts alone. ICE's own internal review recorded "impermissible and unreported uses of force," the medical examiner classified one death as a homicide, and a medical examiner's file documents repeated missed psychiatric medication. This entry is classified as severe rather than extreme. The abuses documented are serious rights violations, but no court or investigative body has yet made findings that would establish torture or enforced disappearance as a matter of law. Human Rights Watch concludes that some cases "amounted to enforced disappearance". This archive records that as HRW's legal assessment, not as an adjudicated finding.