More than two dozen congressional Democrats, led by U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar of El Paso, called on the Trump administration to shutter its troubled Camp East Montana immigrant detention center at Fort Bliss, according to a letter sent Thursday to Department of Homeland Security leaders.
In a span of six weeks starting in mid-December, three people died at the hastily constructed camp at El Paso’s U.S. Army base. One was ruled a homicide involving staff, which former Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said has not occurred in at least 15 years.
ICE initially claimed that 55-year-old Geraldo Lunas Campos, a father of three who had lived in the U.S. for nearly two decades, died of “medical distress” before later alleging a suicide attempt. After the medical examiner called it a homicide, ICE last week quietly updated the cause of death, finding it the result of “spontaneous use of force” to prevent the Cuban “from harming himself.”
In addition to mounting complaints including rotten and insufficient food, impotable drinking water, and sewage flooding the facility holding more than 3,000 men and women, Escobar and other Democrats noted Thursday that among their “biggest concerns” is the “inadequate” medical care.
The camp’s first death — 48-year-old Francisco Gaspar-Andres — “appears to partially be the result of poor medical care by staff,” the lawmakers wrote. ICE said the Guatemalan man, a father of five, died on Dec. 3 of liver and kidney failure after being hospitalized for more than two weeks following detention. His autopsy, obtained by The Texas Tribune, confirmed that he died of organ failure.
ICE officials wrote that Gaspar-Andres, who was arrested in Florida on Labor Day last year as part of a “pre-planned enforcement operation,” struggled with a litany of health care issues, including liver problems. While detained, he repeatedly received medical care for symptoms including bleeding gums, body aches, fever, jaundice and hypertension, and had “constant, high-quality care,” ICE officials said.
But lawmakers argued that despite seeking medical attention from facility staff for “increasingly serious symptoms,” Gaspar-Andres was only hospitalized “once his condition had severely deteriorated.”
His family also believes poor treatment and the El Paso camp’s lack of medical care exacerbated his condition, leading to his death.
“My father told me he was suffering greatly there in that jail, from lack of food, lack of medical attention and the conditions of the place,” his daughter said to The Texas Tribune.
His family told The El Paso Times that he was relatively healthy despite his liver problems, but declined quickly under detention. He was hospitalized two months after ICE arrested him.
His medical needs were “always ignored,” his daughter said. “My father was taken to the hospital when he was already dying, but it was too late.”
In their letter, Democrats said the administration should close the tent camp, which is currently the largest ICE facility in the country. Constructed in a record two months after a $1.2 billion contract was granted to a Virginia-based company with no listed related experience, it is viewed as a model for more than two dozen ICE facilities the government plans to convert into detention centers across the country, including several in Texas.
The problems at Camp East Montana should not only serve as a warning for the administration’s planned ICE expansion, Escobar said, but force the site’s immediate closure.
“For the safety of everyone at the facility, for an end to abuses to detainees, and for fiscal responsibility to the American people,” she and other lawmakers wrote, “the site cannot continue to operate.”
More than 45 people detained at Camp East Montana have alleged abuse and serious injuries to attorneys, according to a letter the American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups sent to DHS and ICE supervisors in December. Those allegations included a teen hospitalized after he accused staff of slamming him to the ground and beating him. The detention staffers blocked the security cameras, he said, and “grabbed my testicles and firmly crushed them.”
Since then, conditions have further deteriorated, said Savannah Kumar, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Texas, who is visiting the El Paso camp this week.
“The situation was already at a breaking point,” Kumar said. “It continues to be a very dire situation for people who are kept there and who are having to live in a detention center where multiple deaths have already occurred. It creates an environment where they are scared for their own lives.”
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