Despite local opposition, the Trump administration has opened what’s expected to be the largest immigration jail in the country, on the grounds of the Fort Bliss military base in El Paso, Texas. In addition to Fort Bliss, the Trump administration also plans to detain immigrants on military bases in New Jersey and Indiana.
On August 18, Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), whose district includes most of El Paso and part of Fort Bliss, was the first federal lawmaker to conduct an oversight tour of the jail, which is expected to eventually hold about 5,000 people.
At a press conference held outside the jail, Escobar told reporters that she did not speak with any of the approximately 1,000 people detained at the “massive tent city.” The jail, known as Camp East Montana, contains “a very highly sophisticated medical unit,” hard floors, and walls that don’t reach the ceiling.
However, Escobar said she remains concerned about conditions at the privately-run jail. For-profit lock-ups, she said, “far too frequently are operating with a profit margin in mind as opposed to a governmental facility.”
Advocates have raised concerns about how the area’s punishing climate — extreme heat and sandstorms — will affect people held at the base.
“People detained there will almost certainly have their basic rights violated while caged in tents under the brutal West Texas sun, with extreme heat that puts their lives at risk,” said Savannah Kumar, a staff attorney at the ACLU of Texas. “This is not just dangerous — it’s cruel. We will continue to monitor the operation of Fort Bliss so that this human and civil rights catastrophe is neither hidden from the public nor ignored by those in power.”
This is not the first time immigrants have been held at the military base. Under President Joe Biden, immigrant children were detained at Fort Bliss in a shelter for unaccompanied minors run by Health and Human Services. Whistleblowers said the children were held in crowded tents filled with sand and dust, and supervised by people who did not speak Spanish, did not interact with them, and had no experience in childcare. The whistleblowers’ attorneys said that “the conditions they witnessed caused physical, mental and emotional harm affecting dozens of children.”
The contract for building and operating the jail, reportedly valued at more than a billion dollars, went to the Acquisition Logistics Company.
The Richmonder reported that the company’s headquarters is listed as a residential house in Richmond, Virginia. Their investigation also revealed that, prior to the Fort Bliss deal, the company had received just over $48 million in federal contract and grant funding since it was founded in 2008, with the majority of its funding coming from contracts with the Department of Defense. The company’s lackluster website states, “Site maintenance in progress.”
The construction of the new jail faced widespread opposition from human rights groups and local elected officials. El Paso County Commissioner Jackie Butler introduced a resolution opposing the facility, which passed unanimously.
“The people of El Paso deserve transparency when a billion-dollar, taxpayer-funded facility is placed in their backyard,” Butler said. “We don’t know who will staff this facility. We don’t know how detainees will be treated. And we don’t know how our local law enforcement, infrastructure, and community services will be affected. That’s unacceptable.”
Escobar said that money spent on the jail could have funded services that would benefit the El Paso community.
“If it was spent on access to child care, if it was spent on universal pre-K, if it was spent on health care,” she said. “There is a tremendous amount of good that money could do for El Paso but it is instead being used to fund mass deportation by the Trump administration.”
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