US’s Largest Migrant Detention Center Sued After Three Deaths

Migrants detained at the US’s largest federal detention center in El Paso, Texas, are subjected to little food or daylight, inconsistent access to hygiene products, and, for some, beatings and harassment by guards, four of them said in a new lawsuit.

The complaint backed by immigrant advocacy groups asks a US District Court for the Western District of Texas judge to certify a class of about 800 people currently detained at Camp East Montana, plus anyone who will be detained there in the future.

“Conditions at Camp East Montana have proven to be lethal,” the Friday lawsuit said, pointing to deaths of three people in six weeks.

The local county medical examiner ruled a 55-year-old Cuban national died by homicide in January, with witnesses saying guards assaulted him after he refused to go into his solitary confinement cell unless he received medicine. His final words, witnesses said, were Spanish for, “you’re choking me,” the suit said.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which opened the facility last August and runs it through private contractors, didn’t respond to a request for comment about the lawsuit.

The ACLU-led lawsuit seeks to expose human rights abuses in the 5,000-person capacity located on the Ft. Bliss military base used to imprison people of Japanese descent in World War II.

Relying also on people previously housed at the center, the plaintiffs tell of dire living conditions cramped in windowless tents packed with bunk beds within a few feet of each other. Hygiene products like soap, razors and nail clippers are hard to come by, and there are delays in receiving medication, they say. The food is spoiled and inadequate, the suit says. In March, the camp closed to visitors after at least 14 cases of measles were detective at the facility, the suit said.

“People detained there experience pervasive and serious harms spanning almost every aspect of their confinement,” the lawsuit said.

The conditions are punitive, the plaintiffs say, a violation of the Fifth Amendment because the camp is only for civil detention, not criminal confinement.

The camps also fails to meet basic minimum detention standards on temperature control, water quality and recreation, the plaintiffs say.

The plaintiffs are represented by American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, Farella Braun + Martel LLP, ACLU Foundation of Texas Inc, and Texas Civil Rights Project.

The case is Angye v. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, W.D. Tex., No. 3:26-cv-1515, 5/29/26.