El Paso, Texas — Serious medical and mental health emergencies have become routine at the largest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in the country since it opened, according to records obtained by The Associated Press.
Data and recordings from more than a hundred 911 calls at Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas, along with interviews and court files, present an alarming picture of overcrowding, medical neglect, malnutrition and emotional distress.
Current and former detainees describe the camp where around 3,000 people a day live in noisy and unsanitary conditions. They say detainees are struggling to access health care as the disease spreads, are losing weight due to lack of food, and fear security guards who have been known to use force to quell unrest.
“Every day felt like a week. Every week felt like a month. Every month felt like a year,” said Owen Ramsingh, a former real estate manager in Columbia, Missouri, who spent several weeks in the camp before being deported in February to the Netherlands. “The East Montana camp was 1,000 percent worse than prison.”
An unnamed Department of Homeland Security spokesman rejected claims about mortgage conditions, saying detainees at the East Montana camp receive food, water and medical treatment in a facility that is cleaned regularly.
Here are some takeaways from AP reporting:
After opening in mid-August, staff at the camp fielded nearly one 911 call per day during its first five months of operation, according to data covering 130 calls from the city of El Paso obtained by The Associated Press.
In one call, a man was heard crying after another detainee assaulted him. In another case, a doctor says a man bangs his head against a wall while expressing suicidal thoughts. In a third message, a nurse says that a pregnant woman is suffering from severe pain and is infected with the Corona virus.
The number of injured detainees ranges from a 19-year-old man who fell from a bunk bed to a 79-year-old man who has difficulty breathing. At least 20 emergency cases were reported as epileptic seizures, including some that resulted in serious head trauma.
The calls show that the detainees repeatedly tried to harm themselves and expressed suicidal thoughts.
Two accidents led to death. On Jan. 3, ICE said security guards responded after a 55-year-old Cuban man tried to harm himself and then used handcuffs and force to restrain him. The coroner ruled that Geraldo Lunas Campos’ death was a homicide due to suffocation.
On January 14, staff reported that a 36-year-old Nicaraguan man died by suicide days after he was arrested while working in Minnesota.
In addition to those cases, at least six other suicide attempts have been reported, according to El Paso city records.
A DHS spokesperson said the facility’s staff “closely monitors at-risk detainees” and provides mental health treatment.
The Washington Post reported in September that a required ICE inspection found that conditions at the facility violated at least 60 federal standards for immigration detention. But that report was never made public, unlike dozens of other facility inspections posted on ICE’s website.
The Department of Homeland Security called the allegations of abuse described in the Washington story false without explaining why the inspection report was wrong. ICE’s current database on detention facilities indicates that the East Montana camp has never been inspected but is scheduled to be inspected this fiscal year.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said ICE’s Office of Detention Oversight recently completed an inspection at the East Montana camp, but did not provide any further information and the results were not made public.
U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, an El Paso Democrat who has toured the camp several times, is calling for it to be closed.
“This facility should not be up and running,” she said. “It’s like this contractor is reinventing the wheel, and people are losing their lives trying it.”
She said the facility had temporarily reduced its population to less than 1,900 when she visited last month and would be closed to visitors temporarily due to a measles outbreak.
On one visit, a female detainee offered Escobar a small portion of scrambled eggs that were still frozen in the middle. I learned that the detainees protested after they stopped receiving juice, fruit and milk with their meals.
Escobar met with an Ecuadorian detainee who said his arm was broken during a violent arrest by immigration agents in Minnesota. Weeks later, the broken bones in his forearm remained protruding under the skin.
Escobar called for an investigation into Acquisition Logistics LLC, which received a contract worth up to $1.3 billion to build and operate the camp. She said the company, which did not return the letters, and its contractors did not provide the services taxpayers were paying for.
“People should be affected by the egregious cruelty, but if they are not affected, I hope they will be affected by the fraud and corruption,” Escobar said.
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This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the US National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org
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Foley reported from Iowa City, Iowa. Besecker reported from Washington.