ICE Sued Over Deaths and Conditions at Camp East Montana

On Friday, May 29, four men held at Camp East Montana sued Immigration and Customs Enforcement in federal court and asked a judge to shut the place down. The class action, Akari Angye et al. v. ICE, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, El Paso Division. The ACLU, the ACLU of Texas, the Texas Civil Rights Project, and the law firm Farella Braun + Martel brought it for four detainees and a proposed class of everyone held at the camp. The four are Gerald Akari Angye, Navdeep, Erik Ivan Rodriguez Flores, and a man who sued under the pseudonym ZOR. Three of them have no criminal record. The suit names eight defendants: ICE; Todd Lyons, the senior official performing the duties of ICE director; Marisa Flores, acting head of ICE’s El Paso field office; Angel Garite, the assistant field office director there; the Department of Homeland Security; DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin; the Department of War; and War Secretary Pete Hegseth. Camp East Montana sits on Fort Bliss, an Army base on the east side of El Paso. One of the main arguments is that everyone at Camp East Montana is in civil immigration detention. As of April 2026, about 80 percent had no criminal record. The complaint argues the conditions punish anyway, in violation of the Fifth Amendment, and that ICE’s decision to keep operating the camp while it fails the agency’s 2025 National Detention Standards is unlawful under the Administrative Procedure Act.

What ICE's Own Inspectors Found at Camp East Montana

ICE’s Office of Detention Oversight inspected Camp East Montana from February 10 to 12, 2026. Inspectors reviewed 24 standards, the camp passed 15, and they logged 49 deficiencies across the other nine. That is the most the office found at any facility all year. However, the report rated the camp acceptable. Twenty-two deficiencies fell under the use-of-force standard alone, including force reports guards never wrote and review teams that never checked whether force was justified. Inspectors found intake classifications that took 14 hours to 25 days against a 12-hour requirement, a detainee with tuberculosis symptoms who was not isolated, and medical grievances that went 14 business days without a response. A first inspection in September 2025 found the facility violated at least 60 federal detention standards. ICE has not released that report.

Three Deaths in Six Weeks

Three people died at Camp East Montana between December 2025 and January 2026. Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55, died on January 3, 2026. The El Paso County Medical Examiner ruled the death a homicide caused by asphyxia from neck and torso compression. ICE’s first report said he became disruptive while waiting for medication, and a later account said he died by suicide. ICE’s public statement emphasized his criminal record. Victor Manuel Diaz, 36, died on January 14, 2026, in what ICE called a presumed suicide. His body was sent to an Army hospital. Francisco Gaspar-Andres, 48, died on December 2, 2025; the complaint says staff delayed transferring him to a hospital and that he died of organ failure. ICE recorded 32 deaths in custody in 2025, a 20-year high that tied the record set in 2004, against a range of 7 to 11 per year in 2023 and 2024. The increase coincided with a 65 percent jump in the national detention population. Texas held about 27,000 detainees and accounted for eight of the 2025 deaths, about 28 percent of the national total. El Paso and Camp East Montana accounted for four of roughly 11 Texas deaths between January 2025 and January 2026.

The Company With No Experience

The camp’s original operator, Acquisition Logistics, had no prior experience in corrections or detention and received a $1.24 billion contract from the Department of Defense in 2025. Its largest previous federal contract was $16 million. ICE terminated that contract in March 2026 and awarded a no-bid contract to Amentum Services, a former subcontractor at the camp that also has no listed experience operating a civil detention center. Photo by El Paso Times The Texas Border Examiner will continue to follow the case as it develops.