DHS Is ‘Upgrading’ a Detention Facility Rife With Abuse Claims. It Should Close It Instead.

On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that a new contractor would take over management of Camp East Montana, one of the largest immigration detention centers in the country. This comes nearly a week after The Washington Post reported the camp might close amid controversy over detainees’ treatment at the facility.

“Far from closing, Camp East Montana is upgrading,” a DHS spokesperson told Fox News. This upgrade will include increasing oversight and detention standards at the facility, which are long overdue.

The DHS opened Camp East Montana, a sprawling 60-acre detention facility at the Fort Bliss Army base outside of El Paso, Texas, in August 2025. Hastily built by a defense contractor with no relevant experience, the $1.2 billion camp quickly raised concerns from watchdog groups and human rights organizations. Within its first 50 days, “migrants were subjected to conditions that violated at least 60 federal standards for immigrant detention,” according to The Washington Post, which cited an inspection report from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Specifically, the report found that the center failed to treat some detainees’ medical conditions and did not provide detainees with a way to contact lawyers.

However, abuses at Camp East Montana didn’t end after the first 50 days. In a letter sent to ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons in December, the American Civil Liberty Union (ACLU) detailed several abuses at the facility. These include officers body slamming a teenager and beating him for switching off “an overhead light in the housing unit.” The teen attests that officers “grabbed [his] testicles and firmly crushed them,” while another put their fingers “deep into [his] ears,” which has led to some trouble hearing in one of his ears. Even after handcuffing the teen, agents mocked and beat him. After losing consciousness in the medical tent, the teen was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. Although ICE standards mandate that medical care be provided to detainees at no cost, the teen was billed by the hospital for the emergency visit.

When a detainee named Eduardo “requested his prescription medications, including for high blood pressure, guards beat him on his ribs, abdomen, and back of the head. He recalls that ‘guards started stomping on me until I lost consciousness,” says the ACLU. He was held in solitary confinement for five days. He then dealt with two more rounds of severe beatings and hospital visits for sustained injuries after requesting his medications again.

The abuse at Camp East Montana extends past these two instances. As the Associated Press (A.P.) recently revealed, detainees are often denied access to medications, and 911 is regularly called to treat medical emergencies such as “seizures, chest and heart problems.” Some of these seizures were a result of head trauma. Attempted suicides have become so common that guards have begun taking bets on which detainee will take their life next. A former detainee told the A.P. that he overheard a guard saying he had put $500 into the betting pool.

Punitive, unsanitary conditions at this facility have also led to the spread of preventable diseases like tuberculosis, COVID-19, and, most recently, measles, which locked down the facility, barring legal counsel from entering until the end of the month. “Serious medical and mental health emergencies have been routine,” says El Paso Today.

The DHS has denied many of the claims made against the facility. “It is a longstanding practice to provide comprehensive medical care—including access to vaccines,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a press release. She notes that services include medical, dental, and mental health care. “This is the best healthcare that many aliens have received in their entire lives,” she said.

It remains to be seen how the DHS will improve conditions at Camp East Montana or who the next contractor will be that oversees the facility. But given the litany of abuses at this site and others controlled by the DHS, it’s safe to assume that conditions are unlikely to improve and abuses are unlikely to stop.