El Paso, Texas — Calls poured in to 911 staff at Camp East Montana in Texas. The largest in the country U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities, at a rate of nearly one a day for five months, each with its own story of pain and despair.
A man cries after being assaulted by another detainee. Another hit his head against a wall after expressing suicidal thoughts. A pregnant woman complained of severe back pain and was also infected with the Corona virus.
“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.”
Buoyed by billions of dollars in new financing, ICE operations have succeeded across the country Troubled societies, Separate families And create Culture of fear In implementation of President Donald Trump’s pledge to rid the country of illegal immigrants.
There have been mass arrests Detention centers swelland turn off ICE A national space hunt To deposit those who have been arrested. Far from the “worst of the worst” that Trump has vowed to deport, data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement shows that 80% of those in the camp have no criminal record, instead falling into far-reaching traps.
Camp East Montana looks like a pop-up village, with six long tents along the Chihuahuan Desert outside El Paso on the U.S. Army’s Fort Bliss, once the site of an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II. Inside the hastily constructed camp, a series of communal living units house thousands of migrants wearing colour-coded uniforms and alligator-style shoes.
But the stories of conditions at the facility, revealed in data and recordings from more than a hundred 911 calls obtained by The Associated Press — as well as follow-up interviews and court filings — present a disturbing picture of overcrowding, medical neglect, malnutrition and emotional turmoil.
Detainees describe a camp where an average of 3,000 people a day live in noisy and unsanitary spaces, where diseases spread easily, and sleep is considered a luxury. The center will be closed to visitors until at least March 19 due to the measles outbreak, according to US Representative Veronica Escobar.
Detainees struggle to obtain medication and health care, lose significant amounts of weight due to lack of food, and live in fear of private security guards who are known to use force to quell unrest. The roofs of the windowless tents leak when it rains, and they see sunlight only during short outings once or twice a week into a narrow recreational area.
In an email, an unnamed Department of Homeland Security spokesperson rejected allegations of foreclosure conditions, saying detainees at the East Montana camp receive food, water and medical treatment in a facility that is regularly cleaned.
The agency said on Tuesday that normal operations were continuing at the camp. The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement was considering a plan to close it.
Ramsingh, like other detainees, said the rooms, toilets and showers were often dirty and infested with insects between cleanings. He said the detainees stole other people’s food because everyone was hungry because of the small and sometimes inedible meals, which led to fights, and the conditions affected his mental health.
He said that at one point he heard a security guard talking about bets among staff about which detainee would die by suicide. The bouncer said he paid $500 into the pool, with the total depending on the outcome. He said the conversation was particularly upsetting because he had been contemplating suicide.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesman said Ramsingh’s account was false, but gave no indication of how the agency would seek to verify it.
Ramsingh said he heard about the betting group after January 3 ICE security guards said Cuban police responded after a 55-year-old Cuban man tried to harm himself and then used handcuffs and force to restrain him. The coroner’s ruling That the death of Geraldo Lunas Campos was a homicide due to asphyxia.
On January 14, employees were informed A 36-year-old Nicaraguan man has died He committed suicide days after his arrest while working in the state of Minnesota.
In addition to those instances, detainees attempted to harm themselves while expressing suicidal thoughts on at least six other occasions that resulted in 911 calls, according to records from the city of El Paso obtained under the Texas Public Information Act.
The Department of Homeland Security said medical staff at the facility “closely monitors vulnerable detainees,” provides mental health treatment and tries to prevent suicide attempts.
Ramsingh was a legal permanent resident and was brought to the United States at the age of five, when his Dutch mother married an American service member. He married an American citizen in 2015.
But when he was 45, immigration authorities detained him at Chicago O’Hare Airport in September after he returned home from a trip to visit his family in the Netherlands. They cited a drug conviction when he was 16, for which he served decades in prison. He was among the first detainees sent to Camp East Montana.
Other medical emergencies included seizures, chest and heart problems, according to an Associated Press review of 130 calls made after the camp opened in mid-August through Jan. 20.
“It is not easy here psychologically,” said detainee Roland Kosi (31), who said he fled Cameroon in 2022 to escape political violence. “You just keep thinking, like always, you’re thinking and thinking of a solution. … It’s really mentally exhausting.”
Immigration authorities in Chicago arrested him in September on a date with his wife, a member of the Army National Guard, to register their marriage to seek legal residency for him. It was quickly shipped to El Paso.
A Cuban immigrant in his 50s told the AP that he requested access to his medications for diabetes, high blood pressure and an enlarged prostate during his six-week detention at the East Montana camp, but it never arrived. He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
The desperate man said he once refused to leave the living quarters when a cleaning crew came. An immigration official offered him ibuprofen and urged him to consider leaving for another country.
He said: “He told me: Look, there are a lot of detainees, and we don’t have enough for everyone.” “The guy from Immigration and Customs Enforcement said to me, ‘Well, why don’t you decide it’s best to leave?’ Leave for Mexico, go to Cuba. “There you can get your medicine, get your stuff.”
Fearing death, the man agreed to self-deportation back to Mexico to Ciudad Juarez – across the international border from his wife and their 11-year-old son in El Paso.
The detainees, most of whom are male, come from all over the world. Some have lived in the United States for decades.
The camp is intended for short-term stay before detainees are transferred or deported. The average stay there is just nine days, according to ICE data, but some detainees have been held for months amid court cases or logistical issues with deportation. Ramsingh said he was stuck there for weeks after his deportation order was issued because Immigration and Customs Enforcement lost his Dutch passport. His personal belongings, including gold jewelry, also disappeared.
Detainee advocates and some members of Congress called for the camp to be closed, citing inhumane conditions.
“This facility should not be up and running,” said Escobar, an El Paso Democrat who has toured the camp several times. “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 after cases of measles and tuberculosis were reported.
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 also met with a detainee from Ecuador who said his arm was broken during a violent arrest by immigration agents in Minnesota. Weeks later, he was still begging for proper medical treatment, and the congresswoman could still see the broken bones in his forearm under the skin.
“I asked him, ‘Did you ask for help?’ And he said, ‘I ask every day, all day,’” she recalls. The only thing they give me is aspirin.”
The Washington Post reported in September that a requested ICE inspection found conditions at the facility violated at least 60 federal standards for immigration detention, but that report was never made public.
A DHS spokesperson did not explain why, but called the allegations in the Washington Post story false. ICE’s Office of Detention Oversight recently completed an inspection at the East Montana camp but that report has not been made public either, the spokesperson said.
The camp was hastily built last summer after the administration awarded a contract now worth up to $1.3 billion to Acquisition Logistics LLC, a Virginia contractor that had not previously managed an ICE facility.
The company uses subcontractors at Camp East Montana, including security company Akima Global Services and medical contractor Loyal Source.
Escobar called for an investigation into the contractors, saying they are not providing services that taxpayers pay for.
“People should be affected by the sheer cruelty, but if they are not affected, I hope they will be affected by the fraud and corruption,” she said.
Akima did not respond to messages seeking comment. The loyal source declined to comment.
Most 911 calls were made by medical staff contracted with the camp. At least 20 incidents were reported as seizures, including some resulting in head trauma.
Some of the injuries resulted from quarrels between detainees, including a man who said he was kicked in the ear and beaten in the ribs. Another man stated that he could not move his left eye after being assaulted the previous day.
A 911 call revealed that a woman who was 12 weeks pregnant had received no prenatal care before arriving at Camp East Montana and was in severe pain. It was among the few emergencies involving women, who make up less than 10% of the camp’s population.
The calls also revealed some disagreements between employees. A doctor was heard reprimanding another staff member for seeking to return a suicidal detainee to a detention center instead of the emergency room, only to then discover that they had mixed up two different patients.
After one of the detainees attempted suicide while in the isolation room, a doctor could be heard speaking with a shaken colleague. The doctor said that a security supervisor assured him that such incidents “should not happen.”
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Editor’s Note – 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.