ICE must improve conditions at biggest lockup, watchdog says

The U.S. Government Accountability Office on Tuesday reported that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement needed to immediately improve conditions at Camp East Montana. Located in El Paso, Texas, Camp East Montana is the largest ICE detention center in the United States. The facility didn’t meet the standards of detention that it needed to meet when it first opened, the GAO said. Additionally, the U.S. Army and ICE wasted millions of taxpayer dollars in poor decisions about agreements with contractors, the government watchdog said.

Top officials at ICE and Homeland Security hadn’t publicly addressed the watchdog report. Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin recently told Newsweek that politicians’ concerns about a different detention center in New Jersey were simply political theater.

What sort of issues does the facility have? ICE did not inspect the facility before it opened, despite being required to do so. Without that inspection, the agency didn’t know how the facility lacked security cameras, an outdoor recreation area, or places for attorney and family visitation, the GAO explained in its report. Eventually, those issues were addressed—but not until days or weeks after the facility had opened, in some cases.

After the facility opened, detainees experienced gaps in healthcare and unsanitary conditions. Individuals with chronic conditions such as diabetes and HIV didn’t have treatment plans in place, in violation of ICE’s own detention standards, the watchdog said. ICE also wasn’t able to show the GAO whether the contractor running the facility had a dietician review the detainees’ diet.

At one point, a guard working with the private contractor running Camp East Montana lost a loaded firearm in the facility. As of March 2026, it still hadn’t been found, the GAO report said. A private contractor firm also did not provide use-of-force reports to ICE regarding an incident in February 2026 in which a detainee died in a violent encounter due to asphyxiation, the GAO said.

How did the facility waste millions of dollars? The U.S. Army and ICE failed to add flexibility provisions into contracts with meal providers that allowed them to purchase fewer meals depending on how many detainees were at the facility. As such, millions of dollars went toward purchasing uneaten food. The GAO called for ICE to incorporate flexibility provisions in its new contracts for Camp East Montana and other facilities so it could save millions of dollars going forward.

Dig deeper: Read Addie Offereins’ report in WORLD Magazine about one man’s experience being detained at Alligator Alcatraz.