Suit filed against ICE over ‘dire’ conditions at largest US immigration detention facility

The first lawsuit relating to the largest immigration detention facility in the US was filed early on Saturday against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), accusing the agency of “dire” conditions that severely violate the human and constitutional rights of those locked up at the camp in Texas.

A clutch of legal organizations is suing via a class action complaint, listing four detainees as plaintiffs for themselves and on behalf of all those currently held as civil detainees at Camp East Montana or who will be held there in the future.

The facility is a sprawling tent camp in the desert on El Paso’s Fort Bliss military base, where the federal government has confined immigrants since last August, when it swiftly erected the tents.

The complaint alleges that conditions at the camp are “dangerous and abusive” as well as “squalid” for those detained, with injustices including, according to the lawsuit:

• “abhorrent medical and mental health care”;

• “inappropriate use of force”;

• “indiscriminate use of solitary confinement”;

• “terrible, rotten, spoiled and inadequate” food;

• “outbreaks of disease”;

• “unsanitary living conditions”;

• “sexual harassment by guards”.

The Guardian has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the parent agency of ICE, and to ICE for comment.

“In the ten months that it has been operational, the facility has become notorious for flagrant human rights abuses that people endure during their detention – they are confined to windowless enclosures in tents and suffer egregious physical abuse by guards,” the lawsuit alleges.

It continues to allege that conditions include: “Abhorrent medical and mental health care, including for people with chronic conditions like cancer and HIV, indiscriminate use of solitary confinement to punish and silence victims of guard abuse, and other flagrant constitutional violations, including exposure to measles, tuberculosis, and other diseases. Not even a year in, there already have been three reported deaths at Camp East Montana.”

The class action complaint was filed in federal court in El Paso, Texas, by a group of advocacy organizations representing the detainee plaintiffs Gerald Akari Angye, Navdeep, Erik Ivan Rodriguez Flores and ZOR (a pseudonym) “on their own behalf and on behalf of others similarly situated” at the ICE detention facility.

The plaintiffs are suing the DHS and its secretary, Markwayne Mullin; ICE and its acting director, Todd Lyons; the acting director of the ICE field office in El Paso, Marisa Flores, and the assistant field office director there, Angel Garite; the Pentagon; and the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth.

Protesters outside Fort Bliss, where Camp East Montana is located on 17 August 2025. Photograph: Paul Ratje/Reuters

With an average of 2,505 people in custody on any given day so far this fiscal year, and with a capacity to hold up to 5,000 people, Camp East Montana has quickly become emblematic of Donald Trump’s rapid expansion of immigration detention – and the sudden surge in deaths that has followed in facilities across the US, including a significant number of suicides.

“Camp East Montana is part of a broader effort by … ICE to ramp up enforcement across the country, using increasingly aggressive tactics, while simultaneously expanding its detention network, pouring tens of billions of taxpayer dollars into new facilities,” the lawsuit states.

It adds: “At the same time, Defendant ICE has gutted the government watchdog agencies that are supposed to ensure minimally adequate conditions in those facilities while also preventing members of Congress from conducting statutorily authorized visits.”

DHS spokespersons have previously denied allegations made about poor conditions at Camp East Montana, which have been well documented. In relation to the poor quality and quantity of food, an inappropriate level of medical care, a dangerous environment, and inadequate access to lawyers, the DHS has said that all such accusations are “unequivocally false”.

Plaintiff Gerald Akari Angye is originally from Cameroon and said he had experienced torture in the past in the west African country.

But he expressed shock at his conditions in detention at Camp East Montana, in a statement released on his behalf by the Beyond Borders Program of the Texas Civil Rights Project, one of the groups that filed the lawsuit on Saturday.

“I never thought I would experience such severely violent treatment by guards here in the United States of America. I have been beaten here and even today, I still have a brace on my hands and wrist. I am in pain and I am scared to be here,” he said.

The 78-page lawsuit alleges that he was “severely beaten” by guards for insisting on speaking to an attorney before signing documents, that he ended up in the hospital and needed a wheelchair, then was put in “an isolated cell” after being discharged from the hospital back to the camp, and that he has coughed up blood because of the dust.

People report that in the tents there is an ever-present smell of urine, feces and body odor because of the filthy, cramped conditions, the lawsuit states, also alleging that “guards touch people sexually without consent with no accountability”, especially during frequent pat-down body searches.

It added that those detained had reported they were starting to mentally deteriorate, no longer feeling human and contemplating suicide, while alleging they were suffering “without any meaningful and consistent psychological support”.

It further added: “Some who cannot take it any more ask to be deported, giving up their chance to stay with their families in the United States where they have lived for decades.”

It alleges, as the Guardian recently reported, that “people struggle to breathe as sand and dust from the desert pours in through the ventilation system and gaps in the shoddy tents they are forced to live in”.

Meanwhile, the lawsuit states that only 20% of those detained at Camp East Montana were identified as having a criminal background – violating immigration law is often a civil offense – and yet it describes the conditions as punitive, alleging that “the cruelty of this system is by design”, to stand as a threat to immigrants and “strike fear” into people, hoping they will abandon their legal claims to stay in the US.

The lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, the ACLU, Human Rights Watch and the law firm Farella Braun + Martel LLP, as well as the Texas Civil Rights Project. Attorneys allege violations of the fifth amendment to the US constitution as well as the Administrative Procedure Act.

Kyle Virgien, senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s National Prison Project, called the facility “a civil rights catastrophe”.

The lawsuit seeks accountability and justice, the groups said.

“Camp East Montana has had far too many dangerous and deadly consequences,” said Rochelle Garza, president of the Texas Civil Rights Project, adding that justice is sought for “those whose lives have been lost and detainees who have been subjected to outrageous conditions, complete lack of medical care and stripped of their dignity without a second thought”.

Joanna Walters contributed additional reporting