Gerald Akari Angye, a 35-year-old high school teacher from Central Africa, fled his home country after being kidnapped and tortured in a separatist conflict. He sought asylum in New Mexico but was picked up by immigration authorities and, according to a lawsuit, has been subjected to more abuse at an ICE detention center in El Paso.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and other agencies filed a 78-page complaint on May 29, alleging that detainees at the tent camp have been subjected to severe physical and sexual abuse and medical neglect.
The lawsuit names U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of War as defendants. Plaintiffs include detainees Angye, Navdeep, Erik Ivan Rodriguez Flores and ZOR, “on their own behalf and on behalf of others similarly situated.”
The documents, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, ask the court to find that the conditions at Camp East Montana in El Paso violate detainees’ Fifth Amendment right to due process and the Administrative Procedure Act.
Advocates, including members of Indivisible Katy and the Cypress-Tomball Democrats, have demanded that Texas ICE facilities be shut down, arguing that about 70 percent of those in ICE custody have no criminal record.
Savannah Kumar, an attorney with ACLU of Texas who conducted interviews with detainees at Camp East Montana over the past several months, said Monday that the attorneys are not asking at this time for immediate corrective measures or financial compensation for the plaintiffs; they simply want the court to acknowledge that unlawful practices are occurring and prepare for a class action suit.
“We’ve been concerned about conditions at Camp East Montana ever since there was an announcement that it was going to be built, especially in such a haphazard way, and that it was going to be filled so quickly,” she said. “We were concerned about whether that facility would be able to be a place that holds human beings. Unfortunately, those fears were confirmed when we interviewed people.”
Kumar added that the detainees who came forward as plaintiffs exhibited tremendous courage. “I think that the willingness of our clients to speak about the conditions that they have experienced is really a testament to how dire things are,” she said. “It takes a lot of bravery to speak on this issue. This is a situation where people are going hungry and they’re struggling to breathe because of the dust that’s blowing into their tents. Three deaths have already occurred at this site and people are afraid of that happening to them too.”
Angye said in a handwritten statement provided by ACLU of Texas that the conditions at the “ICE tent camp in a desert are inhumane and cruel.”
“No human being should ever have to go through this,” he said. “I have already experienced torture in my home country of Cameroon and 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 added. “No one deserves such cruel treatment. We are all humans and deserve to be treated like it.”
Angye sought asylum in New Mexico in late 2024, but an immigration judge denied his application. He appealed and filed a petition in January 2026 seeking release from ICE detention.
Camp East Montana opened in August 2025 on the grounds of Fort Bliss, an active U.S. Army base. ACLU of Texas officials sounded the alarm within a few months of the facility’s operation, sending a letter in December 2025 and another in May 2026 to the federal government detailing interviews with dozens of detainees.
Kumar told the Houston Press in April that it’s evident not just from her agency’s report but an internal ICE inspection that Camp East Montana is failing, and those failures constitute violations of the law.
“It’s deeply concerning, and the things we learned about are shocking experiences that no human being should have to endure,” she said.
The federal Office of Professional Responsibility found 49 “deficiencies” in its investigation of Camp East Montana, referenced in a report released earlier this year. Twenty-two issues related to the use of force, including failures to properly document incidents, lack of required medical checks after physical altercations, and failures to record or preserve video. Some have speculated that the internal review was an excuse to cut ties with an inexperienced prime contractor, Acquisition Logistics, and hire a new one, Amentum Services Inc., which ICE did in March.
Kumar said she and other attorneys have heard that not much has changed since the leadership was overhauled. “We’re hearing that many of the people who work there are the same and that the processes are not notably different,” she said.
Among the violations at Camp East Montana uncovered by the ACLU of Texas investigation were:
- Severe medical neglect and disease outbreaks, including a months-long measles outbreak that infected at least 14 people
- Violent uses of force by officers against detained immigrants and coercive threats of deportation
- Excessive and arbitrary use of solitary confinement to punish people for requesting basic needs like medical care or hygiene
- Inadequate and rancid food has caused detained people to lose extreme amounts of weight
- Exposure to dust storms through openings in tent walls that subjects people to respiratory disease
- Dangerous and unsanitary living conditions in the tent camp, among other rights violations
According to the lawsuit, “The only water they receive is from a faucet above the toilet that is dirty with sand, mucus, spit, and discarded food. People report receiving a small packet of food that consists of two pieces of white bread, a piece of ham or bologna, mustard, and a single slice of cheese and a piece of fruit or cookie, for all three meals.”
Detainees told ACLU lawyers that guards punched them in the face and crushed their testicles. Several said they were put on a bus and ordered to “jump” a border wall to Mexico, even though that was not their home country.
Calls and emails from the Press to ICE’s Washington, D.C. and El Paso field offices were not immediately returned on Monday. Federal authorities denied allegations of beatings, sexual abuse and coercion to The Guardian late last year, saying detainees receive “constitutional protections,” medical care and access to legal representation. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security has said the claims of inhumane conditions are “categorically false.”
“Ensuring the safety, security, and well-being of individuals in our custody is a top priority at ICE,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement to the Texas Tribune.
Houston-based civil rights attorney Randall Kallinen has visited Camp East Montana and says the conditions are horrible, reminiscent of a Holocaust-era death camp.
“People are dying there who should not be dying,” said the attorney, who is representing the family of a Nicaraguan man who died in ICE custody at the El Paso camp. “They don’t have medical care and people are dying because excessive force is being used on them. This is an extremely serious matter.”
Kallinen is not involved in the ACLU lawsuit but said he supports any effort to raise awareness about the conditions at Camp East Montana and hopes that it will result in a judge ordering that corrective measures be taken.
“The federal government is subject to injunctive relief, such as canceling a contract, providing better food or shutting down Camp East Montana,” he said. “With lawsuits, you get discovery. You get all the documents. You can force guards and administrators to testify. Lawsuits are often a search for the truth.”
Camp East Montana is the largest immigration detention facility in the country, with a daily average of about 2,500 detainees and plans to expand to a 5,000-bed capacity. Kumar said in a statement last week that Camp East Montana is at the epicenter of the Trump administration’s “cruel deportation agenda.”
“People from across the country have been transported to a military base in the middle of the desert and locked in a tent detention camp plagued by death, outbreaks of disease, and beatings by guards,” she said. “The lawsuit sheds light on the horrendous conditions the U.S. government has imposed upon people detained at this tent camp. Our clients’ experiences add to a record of cruel and inhumane treatment at this site that is layered upon the shameful history of Japanese internment on this land decades prior.”
Navdeep, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement that he feels like a political pawn taken from his job and family, forced into a temporary tent that is “not designed for human life.”
“We could die here, and it feels like no one here would care,” he said. “With everything happening behind closed doors, I worry the people running this place might cover up the truth about a death or the other injustices that happen here. It’s important for people to know the truth of what is happening here. Being part of this lawsuit is important to me because many people are vulnerable or they become weak because of the conditions here. Even though we come from many different places, we are all human. I want to be a voice for everyone here.”
The lawsuit was filed by the ACLU, the ACLU of Texas, Texas Civil Rights Project, Human Rights Watch and the law firm Farella Braun + Martel LLP, with support from ACLU of New Mexico, Estrella del Paso, Human Rights Watch, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, and the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center.
