Saula W. | Red Phoenix correspondent | Wisconsin—
As part of the expanding oppression of ethnic minorities and migrants, the Trump regime opened up yet another ICE detainment center in Texas, where conditions are so inhumane that the sadistic staff are making a betting game of detainee suicides. Mainstream and right-wing media outlets omit coverage of such facilities, while more and more innocent people are sent to this particular location and forced to cope with its cruel peculiarities.
Located near El Paso, Texas, at roughly the same location as a World War II-era Japanese internment camp, this facility is among the largest of its kind in the United States, and is planned to hold over 5,000 prisoners.
The detainment center has been subject to inhumane conditions and general human rights violations since its opening. During its first 50 days, ICE’s own reporting unit indicated that the center violated at least 60 federal standards, including those relevant to medical treatment and detainee safety.
By Dec. 2025, 45 inmates reported incidents of abuse to their attorneys.
These conditions have persisted in the months since. Owen Ramsingh, a permanent legal resident of the US, has spent weeks in this detainment center, and his account of the conditions demonstrates the camp’s horrendous state.
“Camp East Montana was 1,000% worse than a prison.” According to Ramsingh, most of the living areas in the center were repugnant and infested with insects, and medical treatment was meager. The mass arrests driven by Trump’s racist campaign against immigrants have resulted in immense overcrowding of facilities like Camp East Montana.
Instead of seeking to rectify the brutal conditions leading to massive increases in suicide rates, the ICE officers have started to place bets on prisoner suicides, with pools totaling as much as $500, Ramsingh reports.
In January, facility staff called 911 for emergency medical aid for Geraldo Lunas Campos, a 55-year-old man from Cuba, who died in what independent medical examiners described as a homicide committed by the guards, but which the DHS claimed was a suicide. That same month, staff at the facility reported another suicide and at least six other incidences of self-harm which warranted a call from emergency services.
The conditions of Camp East Montana have also resulted in the spread of infectious diseases. One observer reported that the facility’s population had to be cut to under 1,900 after cases of measles and tuberculosis were reported. This fact further exposes the genocidal agenda of the Trump regime as antithetical to its purported intent to “protect communities” from “violent criminals,” but which is in fact exposing more Americans to contagions long since isolated from our society.
While the Democrats impotently squabble with the Republicans over the Camp’s conditions, the fact remains that the number of captives continues to skyrocket day-by-day and the brutal conditions are not improving. The Democrats are unable to abate the conditions of these facilities. We call on all people of conscience to circulate information of the human rights violations to the general public and rally for the creation of popular anti-ICE organizations to make change a reality.
Categories: Immigration, U.S. News