El Paso, Texas – A lawsuit filed on Saturday accuses US Immigration and Customs Enforcement of subjecting people to "dangerous and abusive" conditions at the country's biggest detention camp.
"In August 2025, the US government rushed to erect and populate a massive tent encampment on the Fort Bliss military base in El Paso," opens a new class action lawsuit, filed by a conglomeration of legal organizations and plaintiffs.
"In the ten months that it has been operational, the facility has become notorious for [the] flagrant human rights abuses that people endure during their detention," the lawsuit continues.
"They are confined to windowless enclosures in tents and suffer egregious physical abuse by guards; abhorrent medical and mental healthcare… indiscriminate use of solitary confinement… and other flagrant constitutional violations, including
exposure to measles, tuberculosis, and other diseases."
The lawsuit was filed by plaintiffs on behalf of the people who have been held, are currently being held, and will be held in what has now become the US' largest and most notorious immigration prison camp.
Throughout the legal complaint, conditions within Camp East Montana are described as "dangerous and abusive," "squalid," "abhorrent," and "unsanitary."
There are reports of sexual harassment and assault by guards, food being rotten and spoiled, widespread violence, disease outbreaks, an extreme lack of sanitation, unsafe breathing air, and a lack of medical and mental healthcare.
"The cruelty of this system is by design," the lawsuit declared. "As courts across the country have
recognized, Defendants use the prospect of detention in harsh conditions to threaten immigrants."
Officials respond to accusations of abuse at ICE's El Paso prison camp
Responding to a request for comment from the Guardian, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said on Saturday that claims of inhumane conditions at Camp East Montana "are categorically false."
"No detainees are being beaten or abused," the spokesperson said. "ICE has higher detention standards than most US prisons that hold actual US citizens."
The accusations detailed in the lawsuit are but the next in a long line of shocking revelations that have come out about Camp East Montana since it was set up, including confirmed reports that it was the site of a major measles outbreak in March.
Multiple migrants have died while in ICE's custody at the facility, including one migrant whose death was later ruled to be a homicide by the local medical examiner.
Camp East Montana's history of alleged abuses have not escaped Representative Veronica Escobar, a Democrat who represents a constituency in El Paso.
"In the eight times I've been to Camp East Montana to conduct oversight, the conditions of the facility have only deteriorated," Escobar wrote on X.
"There remains a failure to meet federal standards for access to appropriate medical care and other basic services at this $1.24 billion place that is a purgatory for human beings held there," she said.