GAO report blasts ICE camp at Fort Bliss over deaths, waste

A federal watchdog said the government poured millions into Camp East Montana while detainees faced unsafe conditions, broken oversight and preventable risk at ICE’s largest detention site. The findings turn Fort Bliss into a test case for whether mass detention can be justified when basic safety and accountability fell apart.

The Government Accountability Office said the sprawling tent facility at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, opened in August 2025 under a $1.3 billion contract that the Army and ICE rushed into place. The speed, the report said, hurt planning and acquisition, and the contractor first chosen had no prior detention-services experience. By the end of February 2026, the camp held about 1,600 detained noncitizens out of a capacity of about 5,000.

The report, released June 9, said the site initially lacked perimeter security cameras, outdoor recreation space and space for attorney and family visits. ICE also opened the camp before construction was complete and did not carry out required oversight to ensure sanitary housing and adequate medical care. In a little more than six months, three detainees died. In one case involving Geraldo Lunas Campos, a 55-year-old Cuban migrant who died in January after being held down by guards, evidence was missing or destroyed, deepening the concerns around the investigation.

The spending problems were just as stark. The Army paid the full cost for meals and services from August 1 through August 15, 2025, even though no detained noncitizens were housed there. GAO said ICE could save tens of millions of dollars through September 2026 by adopting cost-saving measures such as tiered meal pricing, but those changes had not been built into the new contract after ICE terminated the original agreement for convenience in April 2026 and selected a replacement contractor.

Beyond cost, the report detailed security and health failures that fed the criticism of the facility. GAO said ICE oversight was inconsistent, the camp opened without meeting key detention standards, and contractor mistakes led to an escape in October and a January incident in which a loaded firearm was lost inside the facility and never recovered. The contractor also failed to administer tuberculosis skin tests, relying on a questionnaire instead, allowing a detainee with tuberculosis into the general population and helping trigger an outbreak.

The Department of Homeland Security said it has replaced the contractor and that the new company will allow Camp East Montana to keep meeting high detention standards and expand medical care on site. But the pressure on Fort Bliss predates the report: on May 30, the ACLU and other legal groups filed what they called the first lawsuit over the camp, alleging severe medical neglect, disease outbreaks, violent uses of force, excessive solitary confinement, inadequate food and dangerous unsanitary conditions, including a measles outbreak that infected at least 14 people.