Camp East Montana detainees seek independent monitors after deaths and alleged failures

A federal judge is being asked to place an El Paso immigrant detention center under sweeping oversight after a series of deaths and other failures documented by government reports and testimony from detainees.

Attorneys for the detainees asked U.S. District Judge Leon Schydlower of El Paso late Thursday to issue a preliminary injunction ordering the Trump administration to quickly make sweeping changes at Camp East Montana, a privately run facility that was opened in 2025 to be the largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in the country.

The injunction request asks Schydlower to order the government to quickly develop a plan to improve health care at Camp East Montana, and to develop plans to improve living conditions and bring the facility into compliance with the government’s own detention standards.

The judge would appoint independent monitors to oversee improvements to medical and living conditions, under the requested injunction. 

“State-sanctioned violence is occurring in and outside of facilities like Camp East Montana, and the  blatant disregard for human life and access to basic health care should shock the conscience of every American,” said Rochelle Garza, president of the Texas Civil Rights Project, one of the legal groups representing detainees in the lawsuit. 

“If we, as a society, say nothing and go along with the notion that certain lives matter less than others, the government’s abuse and neglect will continue to be normalized. Our preliminary injunction is an effort to stop ICE, and the harm that has seeped into the walls of their detention facilities, from going unchecked,” she said. 

REPORT: ICE detainees at Camp East Montana report frequent beatings, other human rights abuses

The government hasn’t filed a response to the injunction request, and Schydlower hasn’t yet ruled. The injunction request comes in a lawsuit brought in May by several detainees at Camp East Montana.  

The $1.24 billion detention facility, on Fort Bliss land in far East El Paso, opened in August 2025 as a key part of President Donald Trump’s mass detention and deportation efforts. It was built to hold 5,000 people but never approached that number. Camp East Montana housed an average of just over 2,000 people as of early July, the most recent data available.

The facility has faced numerous allegations of widespread violence, inhumane treatment and detention standard violations. Three people have died at the detention center, including one that was ruled a homicide involving facility staff.

Dean Williams, a former director of corrections in Alaska and Colorado, said in an affidavit for the plaintiffs that Camp East Montana is “a facility in crisis.”

“It is not surprising that the facility has been marked since its opening by disorder and chaos, including violent encounters between untrained guards and detained individuals, unnecessary deaths of detained individuals, hazardous and inhumane living conditions, concealment of misconduct, and wasted money and resources,” his affidavit stated.

Williams said he reviewed extensive documents about conditions at Camp East Montana and found that the government was taking a “concealment-based response.”

“In the face of compelling government reports, dozens of sworn declarations describing inhumane and unlawful conditions, observations by members of Congress, and a death that was ruled a homicide by an independent Medical Examiner, government officials have issued flat denials and exhibited a distinct lack of urgency,” he wrote.

READ MORE: Slow ICE reporting on infectious illnesses threatens El Paso outbreak response, health authority says

In another affidavit for the plaintiffs, the former president of the American College of Correctional Physicians said Camp East Montana has “a poorly functioning healthcare delivery system that is not adequate to care for patients with serious medical needs.” 

“Put simply, core components of the healthcare delivery system at Camp East Montana, including intake, sick call, chronic care, medication administration, specialty care, infectious disease protocols, urgent and emergent care, and continuity of care, are not properly functioning. As a result, all people at Camp East Montana are at serious risk of harm, up to and including death,” said Dr. Jeffrey Keller, who has worked in jails and prisons for 29 years.

SEE ALSO: ‘Millions of dollars in waste’: Federal report shows failures at ICE Camp East Montana

In an affidavit filed with the motion for temporary injunction, the daughter of one of the men who died at Camp East Montana said her father complained of poor conditions and treatment as his condition worsened.

Francisco Gaspar Cristobal Andres and his wife, Lucia Pedro Juan, were detained by immigration officers in Florida on Sept. 1, 2025. The father was brought to Camp East Montana two weeks later, even though he had passed out in a Florida detention center and been told by a doctor that he’d had a heart attack, the daughter, Albina Cristobal, said in an affidavit.

“One time, in or around October 2025, he told me that he had not had a bowel movement in about three or four days. He told me his stomach was hurting a lot and felt like it would explode. I asked him if he was offered any medication for this, and he said no. I asked him why the guards at Camp East Montana didn’t give him medication or take him to the doctor. My dad told me it was terrible there, and that detainees didn’t get any treatment when they were sick,” Albina Cristobal said in the affidavit.

On Nov. 17, she received a call from a doctor that her father was taken to an El Paso hospital.

“He said my dad arrived in critical condition and was very sick. He told me, ‘they waited until the last minute to take him to the hospital.’” The doctor told her he was in septic shock and his organs were infected, the affidavit said.

Her mother was deported to Guatemala on Nov. 29, according to the affidavit. Francisco Gaspar Cristobal Andres died on Dec. 3.

“I feel horrible, indescribable pain. I feel so confused about how my beloved papachico could get so sick and die in less than three months. It hurts to know that my dad suffered so much during the last months of his life,” Albina Cristobal said in the affidavit.

The post Camp East Montana detainees seek independent monitors after deaths and alleged failures appeared first on El Paso Matters.