HRW/ACLU 84-Page Report Documents Systematic Abuse at Fort Bliss's Camp East Montana

An 84-page Human Rights Watch and ACLU report released July 15, 2026 documents systematic abuse at Fort Bliss’s Camp East Montana, the largest US immigration detention facility. Guards in unmarked black tactical uniforms entered pods in groups of 15-20 to beat detainees; The facility has logged 49 regulatory violations, flooded cells, detainees held indoors for weeks, and a complete lack of hygiene supplies — even as ICE extended contractor Amentum’s no-bid contract through 2027 for $1.2 billion.

The report’s central death case is the January 3, 2026 killing of Gerardo Lunas Campos, ruled a homicide by the El Paso County Medical Examiner and now under criminal investigation (2026-01-21–lunas-campos-el-paso-medical-examiner-rules-homicide-ice-camp-east-montana); his family’s wrongful-death petition names Amentum’s predecessor contractor Acquisition Logistics (2026-01-20–lunas-campos-family-files-rule-27-petition-western-district-texas). The report’s findings are distinct from the facility’s earlier-documented mental-health-crisis death (2026-07-03–propublica-camp-east-montana-mental-health-crisis-death) and GAO’s wasted-millions finding (2026-06-19–ice-megajail-program-retreats-gao-finds-camp-east-montana-wasted-millions). Camp East Montana’s contractor churn — from Acquisition Logistics to Amentum’s no-bid award (2026-03-11–amentum-services-no-bid-contract-camp-east-montana) — has occurred without any accountability mechanism catching up to the facility’s death rate.

Correction, 2026-08-27 — misattributed allegation removed from the title and body. This entry previously carried the headline “Fort Bliss Guards Bet on Which Detainee Would Die Next” and stated that witnesses told HRW investigators guards bet on which detainee would die. That allegation does not appear in the HRW/ACLU report. Verified 2026-08-27 by reading the report’s own text (hrw.org, 83,530 tokens): every match for “bet” is a substring of another word (better, between, diabetes); “wager” and “pool” return nothing.

The allegation is real but belongs to a different source: NPR, April 3, 2026, sourced to named former detainee Owen Ramsingh, who described a $500 betting pool. Attributing it to an 84-page human-rights report lent it documentary weight the report does not provide, and would have collapsed on contact with the report itself. The underlying claim should be cited to NPR and to Ramsingh by name — who, as a named witness speaking in his own words, is stronger sourcing than an anonymous aggregate would have been.

The report’s actual findings — 84 pages, 80 interviews (71 with detained people), fieldwork October 2025–June 2026 — are unaffected and are verified direct.