The ACLU has sued Immigration and Customs Enforcement over alleged inhumane conditions at Camp East Montana, a massive immigration detention tent camp at the Fort Bliss military base in El Paso.
The lawsuit and motion for class certification were filed on behalf of four people detained at Camp East Montana and is the first lawsuit against the nation’s largest immigration detention center.
Some of the alleged violations listed in the May 29 lawsuit include:
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 use of solitary confinement to punish people for requesting basic needs like medical care or hygiene;Inadequate and rancid food that have caused detained people to lose extreme amounts of weight;Exposure to dust storms through openings in tent walls that subjects people to respiratory disease; andDangerous and unsanitary living conditions in the tent camp.
The lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, asks the court to find the conditions at Camp East Montana violate detained people’s Fifth Amendment right to due process and the Administrative Procedure Act.
“I have lived through the worst days and months of my life here in ICE detention at Ft. Bliss in El Paso,” said Erik Ivan Rodriguez, a plaintiff in the suit. “This lawsuit is very important to me and to all the people who are detained here and suffering. There are many good people here who were just looking for a better future. I had to leave my family and country behind because the government was so bad.”
According to the ACLU, the Trump administration “hastily” opened the sprawling tent camp in August 2025, despite warnings from members of Congress and advocates that the facility would be a humanitarian disaster.
“Camp East Montana is at the epicenter of the Administration’s cruel deportation agenda,” said Savannah Kumar, staff attorney at the ACLU of Texas. “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.
“The lawsuit sheds light on the horrendous conditions the U.S. government has imposed upon people detained at this tent camp.”
Case No. 3:26-cv-01515