Uncovering Abuse Inside America's Largest ICE Detention Center  🔗 **Source:** [Uncovering Abuse Inside America's Largest ICE Detention Center](https://share.snipd.com/episode/699573e6-d33c-4fbf-a951-423d190a4659) ## Highlights - **Detention Population Surge And Rising Deaths** - ICE detention population surged from ~39,000 to over 60,000 since January 2025, coinciding with a spike in deaths in custody. - Jonathan Blitzer notes 52 deaths since the administration returned, with suicides signaling extreme desperation inside facilities. Transcript: Jonathan Blitzer This point, there are more than 60,000 people being held in ICE detention centers across the country. A few months ago, it was as high as 70,000. To give listeners a sense just of an immediate context for that, when Trump first took office in January of 2025, that detention population was around 39,000. So it's exploded in the last year and a half. And it's, you know, coincided with, unsurprisingly, a whole host of horrors that have been reported from inside these detention centers and all kinds of statistics that demonstrate Just how dangerous the conditions inside have become, the most obvious of which is that deaths in ICE detention are way up. There have been 52 since Trump took office a second time. ([Time 0:02:11](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4bf4e469-4059-410d-a8f5-67777d692150)) - **Ray's Story Of Routine Checkin Turned Detention** - Ray, a Cuban rafters-era immigrant who checked in with ICE for years, was detained during a routine appointment and sent to Camp East Montana. - He experienced medication denial, chaotic tent housing, and feared for his life, prompting eventual deportation. Transcript: Jonathan Blitzer Ray came to the United States in 1994, along with 30,000 other Cubans who fled the country that year alone and came on makeshift rafts. It was known as the Rafters Crisis. And he spent, when he was first interdicted by the U.S. Coast Guard in 1994, he spent about 11 months on the U.S. Naval base, Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba, before he was eventually released to live with his father, who had emigrated to the United States in 1980. His father lived in El Paso. And the conditions there with his father grew tense. He had arrived with his half-brother, who wasn't his father's biological son. There was tension between the two of them. And eventually, Ray and his brother leave his father's house, live in a church in El Paso for a very brief period, then relocate to Austin. Number of people he knew from Havana had begun to start an American life for themselves. And for those years, I mean, you're talking about someone who in Ray's case is in his early 20s, has been overwhelmed by everything that's happened to him. He got into trouble and eventually got arrested for his involvement in a robbery, served a five-year prison term in Florida, and then was released. And after his release, because the Cuban government didn't have any sort of relationship with the United States, it didn't accept Cuban immigrants whom the United States would have Wanted maybe to deport. And so as a result, he was authorized to continue to live in the United States on the condition that eventually he start to check in with a local ICE office as part of a program that ICE had, Which essentially recognized that it was impossible for ICE to detain and deport everyone who might be in some sort of complicated standing with immigration law. And so for years, including after he relocated to El Paso in 2014, he would every several months check in with his local ICE officer and, you know, more or less live an ordinary life. And I should say that, you know, for years, even before the second Trump administration comes into office, Ray's friends would always give him a hard time and say, you are the most naive Person on, you know, the planet to think that, you know, you just keep checking in and nothing's going to happen. They're never going to try to arrest you. And he was always really principled in his response to them. He said, look, we made mistakes in our past. And the only way to kind of outrun those mistakes is to try to do things the right way. And so that was what was happening in his life when, you know, in 2016, he gets married to someone who he meets in El Paso. That woman had then a one-year son who Ray adopts as his own. He and the son become very, very close. And they have a life together as a family until October of 2025, when at one of these routine check-ins that he'd been doing for decades at this point, he gets detained and from there gets Sent to Camp East Montana. ([Time 0:03:44](https://share.snipd.com/snip/22605b92-873b-4bb2-8575-00c6dc98db2d)) - **Living In Tents With Sewage And No Medical Care** - On arrival Ray and others slept on concrete floors, then in tents with leaking sewage and no reliable water or medication. - Detainees wiped up sewage with their own clothes and people with mobility needs slept on floors because bunk assignments weren’t adjusted. Transcript: Jonathan Blitzer He spends his first night with 20 other guys sleeping essentially on the floor of what is a kind of de facto holding cell before they're then transferred to these individual tents. Each tent has maybe a dozen or so units in it. And, you know, the first thing he says to the guards when he's taken into custody is, listen, I've got a medical condition. I've got diabetes. I've got high blood pressure. I was recently hospitalized like a couple of months before in New Mexico. I had sepsis. Doctors had to insert a catheter. You know, my health situation is very delicate. And all I ask is that you check in with my wife who has access to my medication at home. And the first thing they said to him in response to that very straightforward expression of concern about his own medical situation was, yeah, we're not going to do that. And so he's already beginning to become uneasy. And then, you know, over the next couple of weeks, not only is he systematically denied his medication, even as he starts to feel increasingly sick, but he also sees other people in his Tent being mistreated. Someone, for example, who comes in in a wheelchair, who can't sit in a top, who can't make it to a top bunk. But at the time that this man comes wheeling in, doesn't, you know, the beds are all occupied, all the bottom bunks are occupied. And someone just throws him a mattress and the guy sleeps on the floor because the guards don't bother to try to, you know, improve the situation. ([Time 0:08:13](https://share.snipd.com/snip/235a3d8a-ad10-4096-a9da-d80e57e481d0)) - **Suffering As A Tool To Force Deportation** - Officials described a deliberate enforcement strategy: make detention conditions so unbearable that detainees abandon legal cases and accept deportation. - Blitzer cites officials and detainee testimony showing frequent ICE visits ask simply, 'Who's ready to leave?'. Transcript: Jonathan Blitzer Think that's exactly right. And I think that's been the case all across the country. And it's actually had a demonstrable effect on the rate at which people abandoned cases. And this is well beyond, say, Camp East Montana, although it's obviously especially true in Camp East Montana. You know, there was a woman whom I'm sure we'll talk about who named Lydia, who was also detained at Camp East Montana, who basically described that half of the women in her unit eventually Agreed to their own deportation because they just couldn't stand the conditions anymore. And that, of course, is true all across the country. And, you know, different groups, Human Rights Watch has an excellent report documenting the rates at which people in the New York tri-state area, for instance, have abandoned their Legal cases because the conditions where they're being held are so inhumane. But that's very much the idea. And one of the interesting kind of trends that you hear in talking to people who've been held in ICE detention during the current administration is for all of the neglect, for all of the General mistreatment, and for the general absence of, you know, ICE officers on the scene. So for example, at Camp East Montana, one of the strangest realities of being there is you're actually interacting most commonly with independent contractors who have different Jobs because there are all these subcontractors providing different services at the facility. So actually speaking to someone who is an ICE official who can give you information about your case is difficult. But the trend is that when those officials appear, they appear to do one thing. It's to say to people, OK, who's ready to leave? Who's ready to end this? ([Time 0:13:25](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8daa1198-9a8e-4ff9-9fb7-512c7e9fa8a6)) - **Witness Accounts Of A Death In Solitary** - Gerardo Lunas Campos repeatedly asked for asthma and psychiatric meds and was denied; detainees say guards restrained and choked him in solitary. - Witnesses recalled his last words: 'I can't breathe.' Transcript: Tonya Mosley Person that you're talking about of the three people who died there, this is Geraldo Lunas Campos, right? His story actually is, he had asthma. He repeatedly asked for medication. Walk us through what happened the night that he died in particular. Jonathan Blitzer Yeah, he had a bunch of different medical conditions. You know, first of all, he had asthma and needed an inhaler. But he also suffered from bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety. So he also took medication for that. And we now know that he was being denied his medicine across all of these different conditions. And, you know, I should just say, too, that in September of 2025, there were so many complaints that were emerging about the conditions at Camp East Montana that two government bodies Sent officials to conduct a site visit and see for themselves what was going on. One of them came from the Government Accountability Office, and the other came from ICE itself. And I spoke to one of the officials who visited the facility back in September to conduct this site visit. And this official said to me that when they came back, their kind of number one warning that they tried to relay up the chain was someone is going to die here. Someone is going to commit suicide here. None of the cells that are meant to hold people who are at risk of committing suicide or who have threatened to commit suicide are sort of proofed against their doing so. And then you have, you fast forward a couple of months to the case of Gerardo Lunes Campos, who, you know, again, has been complaining consistently about how they've denied him his psychiatric Medication. But then in early January, on January 2nd, a number of other detainees hear him complaining about the fact that the guards are not giving him his inhaler for asthma. And the guards threaten to throw him into solitary, which, by the way, is something that an experience that Ray had, too. You know, when he repeatedly said, look, I need medication for my diabetes, they said, if you keep giving us problems, we're going to throw you in solitary. And he would say, as Lunas Campos did, fine, throw me in solitary, just give me my medication. And so people heard Lunas Campos saying as much. And that was essentially the last that the general population saw or heard from him. And the testimony of at least five other detainees who were being held in this row of cells for solitary confinement either heard or even saw what happened next, which was essentially That a bunch of guards in trying to restrain Geraldo de los Campos essentially choked him to death. And his last words were, I can't breathe. You're choking me. You know, basically begging for his life. Our ([Time 0:16:53](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b0579f65-92d1-41a3-8f28-7aea0d18903d)) - **Facility Opened Without Proper Inspections Or Oversight** - ICE allowed people into Camp East Montana before inspections and violated its own policies, impairing oversight. - Representative Veronica Escobar was initially denied legally guaranteed unannounced congressional access while detainees were already held there. Transcript: Jonathan Blitzer Right. And that came out in this government accountability report that was published earlier this summer, exactly as you say. I mean, that is a straightforward violation of ICE's own policy. Tonya Mosley I guess I'm just also trying to understand. It sounds like the government has violated its own rules about the building of these detention centers, the steps that are supposed to be taken. I mean, Congress has the authority to inspect these facilities, right? You write about Representative Veronica Escobar, who represents El Paso, basically fighting to get inside. She couldn't even get inside to do her job at first. Why did that happen and what actually happened in her case? Jonathan Blitzer I'm really glad you mentioned this because this is a major trend also nationwide, where members of Congress by law have the right to make what are known as unannounced visits at these Facilities. But essentially, when members of Congress, and in this case, when Congresswoman Veronica Escobar tries to gain access to this facility, she's just simply denied access, which is Something that ICE legally can't do. And in fact, a federal judge, in the lawsuit I just mentioned, a federal judge sided with the plaintiffs, with these Democratic lawmakers saying, no, the government has to allow members Of Congress, who, of course, are in charge of appropriating money for exactly these detention centers, to visit said detention centers and have a look at the conditions. So in the case of Congresswoman Escobar, it's particularly interesting because she gets wind of the fact in early August that there are people being held at this facility. And she contacts ICE and requests a site visit and, you know, is denied, but is specifically written an email, I believe it was August 8th, in which ICE says, we haven't, this facility Hasn't opened yet. It's not open for business yet. And so therefore you can't come. You know, the official open date is August 17th. Now, we now know that at the time that ICE sent that email to her, there were already 15 people being held at Camp East Montana. And when I spoke to an administration official about this, the official said to me, yeah, as far as we all knew, the date that this facility was supposed to open was August 17th. And then ICE just brought people there early. ([Time 0:22:34](https://share.snipd.com/snip/344b5eb5-02c2-4877-a986-85f422890b92)) - **Lydia Arrested During Morning Prayer And Pressured To Quit** - Lydia, a Minnesota cleaner, was arrested in an unmarked van during a morning prayer Zoom and flown to Texas; her son urged her not to sign deportation papers. - She spent weeks without health screening, got COVID, and faced intense pressure to accept removal. Transcript: Jonathan Blitzer It's January morning, 545. Lydia worked at the time as a cleaner at a retirement home in a town in Minnesota, maybe about 30 miles outside of Minneapolis. There are two ICE cars behind her and she gets pulled over and she happens to be on a Zoom while she's driving. It's piping in through her car speakers. You know, it's on Bluetooth or whatever. And it's a it's a morning prayer session that she does with her husband and a number of other community members and a group of nuns. And actually, the way she informed her family that she was being arrested was she said on this Zoom, I'm being arrested. And her husband, who was already at his job working, this is 545 in the morning, hears that and calls their son. So Lydia has three kids. One has DACA. Two are U.S. Citizens, but one is a minor. And the oldest son, Alexis, who's 21 and a U.S. Citizen, he is the family's, you know, kind of emissary to the outside world during moments like this. I mean, he is the only one, basically, who is on unquestioned legal footing. Tonya Mosley Right, he's solid legal footing, but he's also helping them navigate their way through what they had already been afraid might happen to them. So she's arrested. She's held in a van disguised to look like a construction vehicle. It has ladders. It has fluorescent vests displayed in the windows. And I bring that up because this detail stopped me. It stopped me because it means that these operations are happening around us and many of us don't even know it. Jonathan Blitzer I'm glad it called out to that detail because it's incredibly striking detail. I mean, even before the current Trump administration, ICE has engaged in practices that are, you know, misleading, probably to put it most politely, to try to convince people, say, To open their doors and so on. But what we're seeing now, of course, is a level of unfettered behavior that certainly I haven't seen in my lifetime, which is, you know, not only plain agents in, you know, wearing masks, Driving, you know, unmarked cars, essentially abducting people on the streets. That's right. That's right. In this case, you know, Lydia and this other man are being held in this van. And the idea is to try to cause as little outward disruption as possible while these agents continue to try to make more arrests. ([Time 0:31:33](https://share.snipd.com/snip/025de87f-1dd0-4c16-a759-cdb58f1a5373)) - **Policy Shift To Expand Targets And Build Warehouses** - The administration is expanding detention to 'de-legalize' more people by targeting those with temporary or pending statuses, not just undocumented migrants. - Blitzer warns proposed large-scale warehouse expansion will replicate Camp East Montana dynamics nationwide. Transcript: Tonya Mosley Now, this government's plan is bigger than Camp East Montana. They're planning to spend billions of dollars to build even more warehouses across the country. A lawyer you spoke to said Camp East Montana is a crystal ball into what the warehouses will look like. So what should we understand about what is coming? Jonathan Blitzer You know, I think one of the things, as someone who covers this stuff, I'm increasingly aware of the degree to which it sounds like a cliche to say, you know, for as long as the system is Broken, these populations are unspeakably vulnerable and the country needs to have this reckoning. I think if I had to boil down what's happening now that's sort of most alarming and that I think is going to continue to get worse and worse in the months ahead. There are a few kind of categories that this administration has redefined. The first is the current administration is actually trying to effectively de-legalize people right now. So, you know, when you talk about someone like Lorenzo Salgao, who was shot by an ICE agent in Houston recently, this is someone who's lived in the country for 30 years, who didn't have A criminal record, had a family, who was like doing basically everything someone could possibly do under the circumstances and who, you know, couldn't regularize his status because The system is broken beyond repair and the politics stand in the way of fixing the system. People who have applied for asylum and who are arrested at immigration court while they're actually appearing before a judge who wind up in a place like Camp East Montana, treated miserably And in many cases agree to be deported, et cetera. But then you have people who actually have some form of status, whether it's temporary protected status, whether it's any number of forms of status, deferred action Childhood Arrivals, DACA, that the current administration is trying to strip away from people. So the administration is actually not just preying on a population that's already undocumented, but it's actually trying to widen the population of people who can be targeted. ([Time 0:42:24](https://share.snipd.com/snip/62c7ec2f-1da2-44f5-8553-01f7accc5840)) - **Local Advocacy Groups Filling The Gap Under Strain** - Grassroots groups in El Paso like Las Americas and La Estrella del Paso provided legal aid, visited detainees, and supported families despite funding cuts. - These nonprofits operate on shoestrings and face federal contract cancellations and delayed payments threatening closure. Transcript: Jonathan Blitzer Actually glad you asked about that because one of the strange emotions you have reporting these stories is on the one hand, you're confronting some of the most unimaginable things Being done to people by the system, you know, by the government. But then you're also meeting people who are incredibly generous and committed in trying to fill this void left by the government. And there are organizations, you know, in El Paso especially, I have to say, there's an organization called Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, which was involved specifically In helping Ray and his family, but has helped countless others that operate on a shoestring budget and that basically do every single thing within their power to try to bring human dignity To families who are put through this kind of churn. Another organization called La Estrella del Paso, which interestingly, and I think this is also revealing of a general national trend, you know, they do a lot of work. You know, there are very few organizations or people who get into these facilities. It's very limited. It's very hard to get information out. And so La Estrella del Paso is one of the organizations that has lawyers going in regularly. It does critical work. And a big part of its institutional program involves helping give legal representation to unaccompanied children. And the Trump administration has canceled its historic contracts, the federal government's contracts with an organization like this one, and in fact, owes this organization almost A million dollars that it's refusing to pay. And there's an ongoing case in federal court in which a judge basically sided with this organization, and the Trump administration is just ignoring them. And this organization is facing closure, essentially. And when you think about what the knockdown effects of that would be, it's terrifying because, you know, an organization like that is, you know, helping so many families. And so I think about Las Americas, I think about La Estrella, and they do give me hope because of how fiercely they fight. And they fight, I should say, kind of away from the partisan fray. They're just dealing with the human reality of this. They're just trying to kind of thread the needle under the circumstances of providing the relief that they can and the advocacy they can. ([Time 0:45:02](https://share.snipd.com/snip/52a7c2e0-a70f-48a1-a6d0-0430a8166ec5))