Lawsuit Alleges ‘Inhumane Treatment’ at U.S.’s Largest Immigration Detention Center Amid Record Deaths
By Andrew Hay
May 30 (Reuters) – Civil rights groups have sued U.S. immigration authorities over what they describe as a pattern of human rights abuses at the country’s largest detention center, a sprawling tent camp in El Paso, Texas, where three people have died since it opened nine months ago.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court in the Western District of Texas, names U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as defendants. It is the first legal challenge to conditions at Camp East Montana, a $1.2 billion facility on the Fort Bliss military base that was set up under President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation campaign.
The American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Watch, and the Texas Civil Rights Project brought the complaint on behalf of four men currently held at the camp. The ACLU said in a statement that the suit seeks to force improvements for the more than 2,700 detainees housed in the desert facility.
“We’re suing to ensure that no other human being has to endure the inhumane treatment that our clients have suffered,” said Kyle Virgien, an attorney with the ACLU’s National Prison Project.
DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The agency has previously said the camp meets federal detention standards.
A congressionally mandated inspection in February found 49 violations of detention standards at the temporary structures, including 11 related to use of force and restraints and five related to medical care.
The ACLU lawsuit alleges that detainees are held in windowless enclosures, subjected to physical abuse by guards, denied adequate medical and mental health care, placed in solitary confinement indiscriminately, and exposed to communicable diseases such as measles and tuberculosis.
One of the named plaintiffs, Venezuelan immigrant Erik Ivan Rodriguez, said in a statement that officials used physical violence to coerce him into signing deportation papers. Another plaintiff, Gerald Akari Angye from Cameroon, said he was beaten by guards.
The death of a Cuban immigrant at the camp on January 3 was ruled a homicide by El Paso medical examiners, who cited “asphyxia due to neck and torso compression.” Immigration officials initially attributed Geraldo Lunas Campos’s death to “medical distress,” then said he attempted suicide and died during a struggle with guards trying to save him. The ACLU lawsuit alleges he was beaten to death after asking for his asthma medication.
A fourth man died shortly after being released from the camp, where he had been denied chemotherapy for cancer, the complaint states.
The lawsuit comes as immigration detention deaths in the United States reached a 20-year high in 2025, according to data cited by the plaintiffs. The Trump administration has significantly increased the number of people held for immigration violations, raising concerns among human rights groups and lawmakers about systemic failures in oversight and medical care at detention facilities nationwide.
(Reporting by Andrew Hay in New Mexico; Editing by Andrea Ricci)