EL PASO, Texas — A long paved road, flanked by desert sand, leads to the big white tents usually housing some 3,000 immigrants with beds for up to 2,000 more.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, detention center is located on the grounds of the U.S. Army's Fort Bliss military base and is known as Camp East Montana.
Opened in August 2025, it's currently the largest immigrant detention center in the U.S. and one of the facilities with the most detainee deaths. Out of 25 people who died in ICE detention since October, 3 were at Camp East Montana.
Concerns are rising among immigration advocates, lawmakers and former detainees about the company that initially ran the detention center, Acquisition Logistics, which had never run a center before securing a $1.3 billion federal contract. Advocates and multiple members of Congress are calling for the facility to be shut down.
"When they say in the news that this is the worst facility in the country, they damn right," said Owen Ramsingh, a man from the Netherlands who was detained at Camp East Montana for more than four months before being deported in February.
He called the living conditions, food, bathrooms, and treatment by the facility's staff "horrible."
Ramsingh said he saw detainees battling mental health crises due to being detained for long periods in large cells that could house up to 72 men. He says they were served small portions of food, and suffered in cramped quarters with foul excrement odor emanating from the bathrooms in the cells.
ICE inspectors in February found 49 violations to detention standards at the facility, including inadequate medical care and failure from staff to "accurately document required checks to prevent significant self-harm and suicide."
More than 45 people interviewed by the ACLU at Camp East Montana "reveal alarming conditions of confinement and repeated instances of coercion, physical force, and threats against immigrants facing third-country deportations, in violation of agency policies and standards, as well as statutory and constitutional protections," the civil liberties group said in its December letter to ICE.
Multiple detainee deaths raise big concerns
In December, Francisco Gaspar-Andres, a Guatemalan man, died of kidney failure after being hospitalized for two weeks, DHS said.
A month later, Cuban national Geraldo Luna Campos died while in detention. Initially, DHS said he died after experiencing "medical distress." The agency said he had become "disruptive while in line for medication" and was placed in segregation.
However, an autopsy conducted by the El Paso County Medical Examiner's Office ruled his death a homicide. The report said he died from "asphyxia due to neck and torso compression." No one has been charged in his death.
A third death happened on Jan. 14, according to DHS. Victor Manuel Diaz, a national of Nicaragua died by suicide, DHS said in a statement.
But Diaz's family do not believe that to be true.
"When we talked to Victor after he had been detained by ICE in Minnesota and brought to Camp East Montana at Fort Bliss Army Base in El Paso, we were not worried because Victor would just be returned to Nicaragua to us. It was a very brief call," the family said in a statement to NPR. "Little did we know it was the last time we would ever hear his voice."
The family's attorney, Randall Kallinen, told reporters last month Diaz's autopsy was performed by the Army's medical examiner.
"It was said that he died in a room by himself, in a clinic room. And we haven't received word of why he was in the clinic," Kallinen said. "Because they're not saying he he tried to commit suicide somewhere else and then went to the clinic room — they're saying he was in the clinic. That's what their story is."
In a statement to NPR, the Department of Homeland Security said "When there are signs of a detainee self-harming, staff abides by strict prevention and intervention protocol to ensure the detainee's health and wellbeing is protected."
The agency said ICE conducts mental health intake screenings for detainees within 12 hours of their arrival to any detention facility.
Lack of nutrition, mental health crises
45-year-old Owen Ramsingh has lived in the U.S. since 1986, when he came to Omaha, Nebraska with his mother when he was just five years old.
When he was a teenager, Ramsingh was convicted of possession of crack cocaine. He served 25 months in prison, part of that time in a state penitentiary.
After his release, Ramsingh said he "changed my life around." He worked in construction for 15 years, had kids, later worked in security and even started his own power washing business.
Ramsingh had been a permanent resident all of these years, and he renewed his green card multiple times over the years. He says he often visited the Netherlands without any issues. But in March 2025, when he returned from Europe, he was detained at the Chicago O'Hare Airport by immigration agents. He said they told him he was being detained due to his nearly three decades old conviction.
Ramsingh was eventually transferred to Camp East Montana.
He said he saw at least one detainee collapse.
"We were beating on the windows," he said, adding he yelled at the guards, "'You guys are killing us!' And they just laughed at us."
Talking from his father's home in the Netherlands, after being deported in mid-March, Ramsingh told NPR he also heard guards betting on which detainee was going to die by suicide.
"This is so screwed up that you're trying to bet on our lives, you know, with these other officers thinking this s- - - is funny," Ramsingh said. For him it was personal — he told NPR he talked three detainees out of killing themselves.
Acquisition Logistics LLC, the private company in charge of the detention center when Ramsingh was there, did not respond to NPR's questions about this incident or its past management of the facility. DHS said in a statement that the agency inherited the contract from the Department of War.
The agency pointed out Ramsingh's past conviction as the reason for his removal. "A green card is a privilege, not a right, and under our nation's laws, our government has the authority to revoke a green card if our laws are broken and abused," DHS said.
A woman who was detained at Camp East Montana told NPR she lost 35 pounds in her months-long detention there. The woman asked NPR for anonymity because she fears retaliation from immigration authorities.
"It was a horrible experience," the woman said.
She told NPR the food was often inedible, and that the portions provided were very small. Detainees had to ration their food by hiding fruits and crackers under their shirts.
She said most of the women in her pod had stomach issues "because nobody wanted to eat." People would eat a tortilla with water to feel full because they didn't want to eat the food, which the woman said tasted bad.
The woman said she had trouble sleeping. She told NPR when she or others would get sick, the medical staff would most of the time tell them to drink water and offer acetaminophen.
An inexperienced company
Public complaints surfaced soon after Camp East Montana was opened in August 2025.
Several measles and tuberculosis outbreaks sparked multiple lockdowns.
Imelda Maynard, the legal director of the immigration legal clinic Estrella de El Paso, told NPR her team has repeatedly encountered roadblocks since the opening of the facility.
"We've always run into hiccups here and there, but with this camp in particular, there's been issues from the get go on just trying to establish baseline communication with people there," Maynard said.
Advocates have placed much of the blame on Acquisition Logistics, LLC, A Virginia-based small company that secured a $1.3 billion contract with the federal government to run Camp East Montana. However, the company had never operated a detention facility before.
"At that facility … it really does feel like one side doesn't know what the other side is doing and everyone's just kind of doing their own thing," Maynard said. "It doesn't seem like there's coordinated efforts, and I really feel like that's a management problem, and I think that's on the contractor side of things."
DHS replaced Acquisition Logistics' contract last month. The company did not reply to NPR's request for comment.
A new, $453 million contract was given to Amentum Services, a company that was working as a subcontractor for Acquisition Logistics. Amentum Services didn't respond to NPR's request for comment.
"ICE is always looking at ways to improve our detention facilities to ensure we are providing the best care to illegal aliens in our custody," a DHS official said.
DHS said in a statement Amentum Services has been a partner of ICE in managing Camp East Montana. The contract, the agency said, "will allow Camp East Montana to continue abiding by the highest detention standards WITH the ability to provide MORE medical care on-site. This contract also allows more on-site staff and a PRECISE quality assurance surveillance plan."
The agency said ICE will have "even more oversight of the contractors at this facility," although it didn't provide details of what that entails.
"Far from closing, Camp East Montana is upgrading," DHS said.
But immigrant rights activists and members of Congress have called for the facility to shut down.
Congresswoman Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, called Acquisition Logistics LLC's contract and the complaints from the detainees "very troubling."
"These people are playing with the taxpayer dollars of hardworking Americans," Escobar, who has visited Camp East Montana multiple times, said. "It's unacceptable."
She wants the Department of Justice to investigate the contract issued to Acquisition Logistics LLC.
"It's not enough to just switch contractors," Escobar said. "Acquisition Logistics needs to be investigated."
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