Suit filed against ICE over ‘dire’ conditions at largest US immigration detention facility

At US’s largest immigration center, Texas’s Camp East Montana, plaintiffs allege ‘dangerous and abusive’ situation

The first lawsuit relating to the largest immigration detention facility in the US was filed early on Saturday against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), accusing the agency of “dire” conditions that severely violate the human and constitutional rights of those locked up at the camp in Texas.

A clutch of legal organizations is suing via a class-action complaint, listing four detainees as plaintiffs for themselves and on behalf of all those currently held as civil detainees at Camp East Montana or who will be held there in the future.

The facility is a sprawling tent camp in the desert on El Paso’s Fort Bliss military base, where the federal government has confined immigrants since last August, when it swiftly erected the tents.