Summary Continued in Body Prose
The Associated Press reported that more than a hundred 911 calls, along with interviews and court filings, document serious medical and mental-health emergencies at Camp East Montana, the largest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility, in El Paso, Texas. The AP said the calls and records describe overcrowding, inadequate medical care, malnutrition, and emotional distress among detainees, including repeated suicide attempts. In response, the Department of Homeland Security rejected the claims, saying the facility is regularly cleaned and that detainees receive food, water and medical treatment.
AP said camp staff made nearly one 911 call per day during the facility’s first five months of operation after it opened in mid-August. The AP’s review cited data covering 130 calls from the City of El Paso obtained by the news organization, describing multiple emergency situations involving detainees ranging from a 19-year-old man who fell out of a bunk bed to a 79-year-old man struggling to breathe. The AP also said that at least 20 emergencies were reported as seizures, including some that resulted in serious head trauma.
According to AP’s review of calls, medical responses included incidents involving head injuries and mental-health crises. AP reported one call in which a man is heard sobbing after being assaulted by another detainee, and another in which a doctor said a man was banging his head against the wall while expressing suicidal thoughts. AP also reported a call in which a nurse said a pregnant woman was in severe pain and had coronavirus.
The AP said current and former detainees described a facility where about 3,000 people have lived per day in loud and unsanitary quarters. AP reported that detainees said they struggled to obtain health care as disease spread and lost weight because of lack of food. AP also reported that detainees said they feared security guards known to use force to put down disturbances.
In the AP reporting, one former detainee, Owen Ramsingh, described what he experienced at Camp East Montana. Ramsingh, identified by AP as a former property manager in Columbia, Missouri, said in a quote included in the story: “Every day felt like a week. Every week felt like a month. Every month felt like a year.” AP said Ramsingh spent several weeks in the camp before his deportation to the Netherlands in February.
AP’s reporting also described deaths and repeated attempted suicides connected to the camp and detainee mental-health emergencies. The AP said two incidents resulted in death: a 55-year-old Cuban man whose attempted self-harm prompted a response by security guards on Jan. 3, and a 36-year-old Nicaraguan man whose death by suicide was reported on Jan. 14. AP said an examiner ruled that Geraldo Lunas Campos’s death was a homicide caused by asphyxia, and it said that the Jan. 14 death involved a detainee who died by suicide days after being detained while working in Minnesota. AP further said records from the City of El Paso showed at least six other suicide attempts.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, who did not provide a name, rejected the AP’s allegations of subprime conditions. The spokesperson told AP that the facility’s staff “closely monitors at-risk detainees” and provides mental health treatment, and that Camp East Montana detainees receive food, water and medical care in a facility that is regularly cleaned. AP reported that ICE has not released inspection results that had been described elsewhere, and that ICE’s database indicates Camp East Montana had never been inspected but was scheduled for an inspection this fiscal year.
AP said the Washington Post reported in September that a required ICE inspection found conditions at the facility violated at least 60 federal standards for immigration detention, but that the inspection report has never been released. AP reported that DHS called claims described in the Post story false without explaining why, and that the results of an ICE Office of Detention Oversight inspection at Camp East Montana were not made public.
The AP also reported political pressure for change tied to the facility. U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, an El Paso Democrat who AP said has toured the camp several times, called for the camp’s closure and said she wants a contract investigation into Acquisition Logistics LLC. AP reported that Escobar said the contractor’s operation is putting lives at risk and that she called for investigation into whether the company and its subcontractors were delivering services paid for by taxpayers.
Escobar’s remarks included a statement on what she views as the underlying cause of the alleged harm. AP said she told AP: “People should be moved by the abject cruelty, but if they’re not, I hope they’re moved by the fraud and corruption.” AP also reported that Escobar said the facility had temporarily cut its population below 1,900 when she visited last month, that it would close to visitors temporarily because of a measles outbreak, and that on her visit a female detainee showed her “a meager serving of scrambled eggs” that was described as having been served still frozen in the middle.
AP reported that Escobar also met with a detainee from Ecuador who said his arm had been broken during a violent arrest by immigration agents in Minnesota, and that Escobar said she could still see fractured bones in his forearm under the skin weeks later. AP reported that Escobar called for a contract investigation and said the camp was built and operated under a contract awarded to Acquisition Logistics LLC worth up to $1.3 billion.