The closure of Camp East Montana is not a victory.
It is a smoke screen. By creating unlivable, infectious conditions, authorities justify sudden shutdowns and mass, untraceable transfers. They plunge detainees into the bureaucratic black holes of Alligator Alcatraz-style operations, only to permanently disappear them on flights to unknown continents.
This is an organized machinery of erasure. We must demand total transparency on every single transfer manifest exiting these shuttered camps. If we look away when the gates close, the people inside will cease to exist on paper.
This is an organized machinery of erasure. We must demand total transparency on every single transfer manifest exiting these shuttered camps. If we look away when the gates close, the people inside will cease to exist on paper.
THE BLUEPRINT OF DISPOSABILITY
How DHS Creates Horrific Conditions, Shuts Down Facilities,
and Disappears Migrants - Then Opens New Ones
An Investigative Report | March 2026
Introduction: A Manufactured Crisis
This is not a victory for human rights. When a detention facility is shut down amid a crisis of deaths, disease outbreaks, abuse, and public outrage, the closure is not reform. It is relocation. The detainees inside, who may have been deported without documentation, transferred to undisclosed locations, or simply erased from government databases, are the collateral damage of a machine that has been deliberately designed to avoid accountability.
This report examines two of the most egregious recent examples: the Alligator Alcatraz facility in the Florida Everglades, which operates as the blueprint for a new model of state-federal mass detention, and Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas, which is now being closed following the deaths of three detainees, allegations of guard-inflicted homicide, and active outbreaks of measles, tuberculosis, and COVID-19. Together, they reveal a systemic pattern: create inhumane conditions, deploy maximum secrecy, deny lawyers and judges access, deport people to unknown countries - then when the crisis becomes undeniable, shut it down and open a new one.
PART I: Alligator Alcatraz - The Blueprint
Origins and Construction
The South Florida Detention Facility - officially branded “Alligator Alcatraz” by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier - was announced on June 19, 2025, and opened just days later on July 1, 2025, when President Trump, Secretary Kristi Noem, and Governor Ron DeSantis jointly celebrated its launch. The facility was built at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport inside Big Cypress National Preserve in Ochopee, Florida - a remote location in the Everglades with no environmental review, built under a 2023 emergency powers declaration. DeSantis used this standing state of emergency to seize the county-owned airfield and fast-track construction without normal environmental safeguards or local collaboration.
Trump praised it at the opening, saying it ‘might be as good as the real Alcatraz,’ and suggested it could become a national model. The Republican Party of Florida began selling branded merchandise. Critics noted that the hundreds of people held inside were not facing criminal charges.
800 Detainees Vanished from ICE Database
One of the most alarming findings about Alligator Alcatraz was reported by Democracy Now! and the Miami Herald: of approximately 1,800 individuals at the facility in July 2025, around 800 no longer appeared in the ICE online database. Another 450 were listed only as “Call ICE for details.” Attorneys and family members reported it was effectively impossible to locate detainees, confirm whether they had been transferred, or verify whether they had been deported. State officials attributed the issue to database errors, but journalists and advocates argued it reflected a deliberate opacity in a system built to avoid oversight.
Detainees Held Without Charges, Courts Denied Jurisdiction
Civil rights attorneys from the ACLU seeking emergency relief testified that detainees at Alligator Alcatraz were being held without any charges and that a federal immigration court had canceled bond hearings. Lawyers who appeared for bond hearings on behalf of their clients were told the immigration court had no jurisdiction over them. Attorneys demanded that federal and state officials identify which court had jurisdiction - but none was identified.
ACLU attorney Eunice Cho described it as “an emergency situation,” testifying that “Officers at Alligator Alcatraz are going around trying to force people to sign deportation orders without the ability to speak to counsel.” U.S. District Judge Rodolfo Ruiz acknowledged the problem, noting his court may be “walking into a bit of a black hole about the interplay between the federal and state authorities and certainly jurisdictional concerns.”
Deported Without Counsel: Lawyers Punished for Seeking Help
In federal court testimony in January 2026, two former Alligator Alcatraz detainees - who had already been deported to Colombia and Haiti - testified remotely about systematic punishment for seeking legal counsel. The men said they had to write attorneys’ phone numbers using soap because they had no access to pen and paper. Their monitored phone calls dropped every time they mentioned trying to contact a lawyer.
One Haitian detainee testified he was presented with documents he could not read and pressured to sign them. The documents turned out to be self-deportation papers. He had applied for asylum in the United States. When presented with a second set of papers, he signed them - believing they would send him to Mexico. He was sent back to Haiti. “I had to sign the documents,” he said. “I wasn’t able to speak first with attorneys... they forced me to do it.”
The detainees’ lawsuit also alleged that attorneys were required to schedule visits three days in advance (unlike all other ICE facilities where lawyers can simply show up), and that detainees were routinely transferred before those appointments occurred - making legal representation structurally impossible.
Amnesty International: Torture and Enforced Disappearances
After a September 2025 research trip to southern Florida, Amnesty International published a report titled ‘Torture and Enforced Disappearances in the Sunshine State,’ documenting conditions at both Alligator Alcatraz and the Krome North Processing Center. Amnesty concluded that detention conditions at both facilities “amount to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment,” and that the use of solitary confinement at Krome and use of the “box” at Alligator Alcatraz “amount to torture or other ill-treatment.”
Detainees described worms in food, toilets that don’t flush, floors flooded with fecal waste, and mosquitoes and insects throughout the facility. A federal judge ordered the facility to pause operations due to failure to conduct an environmental impact review - but an appellate court allowed the facility to remain open while the order was appealed.
Judges Blocked, Courts Unclear on Authority
Attorneys for detainees formally asked U.S. District Judge Sheri Polster Chappell to make an unscheduled in-person visit to the facility in December 2025 because they were receiving no reliable information about whether clients were being given confidential access to counsel. The confusion over who has legal authority over the facility - Florida state agencies, private contractors, or federal ICE - has created a deliberate accountability vacuum that multiple judges have noted but none have been able to resolve. As Judge Ruiz acknowledged, “that’s part of the problem - who is doing what in this facility?”
PART II: Camp East Montana - Deaths, Disease, and Cover-Up
A Billion-Dollar Tent City Built in Weeks
Camp East Montana opened on August 17, 2025, on the grounds of Fort Bliss U.S. Army Base in El Paso, Texas. It was operated by Acquisition Logistics LLC, a Virginia company run by Kenneth Wagner out of a single-family home, whose largest previous contract was reportedly worth $16 million. The company was awarded a $1.2 billion federal contract to build and operate what became the largest ICE detention facility in the United States, holding an average of nearly 3,000 detainees per day. The company’s website during this period listed only an address and a header reading “Site maintenance in progress.”
ICE’s own detention oversight unit found that within Camp East Montana’s first 50 days of operation, conditions violated at least 60 federal detention standards. The ACLU described it as the largest internment facility in the United States.
Three Deaths in Six Weeks - Including One Ruled Homicide
Between mid-December 2025 and late January 2026, three people died at Camp East Montana within a 44-day period - half of all ICE custody deaths in Texas during that stretch. Experts noted the homicide ruling was the first ICE staff-linked detainee homicide ruling in at least 15 years.
Francisco Gaspar-Andres, 48, from Guatemala, died in December 2025. Rep. Veronica Escobar and advocates alleged he died of medical neglect.
Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55, a Cuban detainee, died on January 3, 2026. ICE initially reported “medical distress,” then revised its account to say his death was the result of a “spontaneous use of force” to “prevent him from harming himself.” But the El Paso County Medical Examiner ruled his death a homicide: he had been suffocated, becoming unresponsive while being physically restrained by staff. Six fellow detainees filed federal court statements describing how Campos had begged for days for his asthma medication. Guards refused and threatened him with solitary confinement. Witnesses described hearing his body being slammed against a wall or floor, then gasping, then silence.
Victor Manuel Diaz, 36, from Nicaragua, died on January 14, 2026, reportedly of a “presumed suicide” involving pants tied around his neck. Unlike the other two men, Diaz’s body was transferred to William Beaumont Army Medical Center - under federal jurisdiction - bypassing the local medical examiner. His family disputed the suicide characterization, described ICE’s communications as “suspicious” and irregular, and launched an independent investigation.
Guards Alleged to Have Crushed Detainees’ Testicles
A December 2025 letter from the ACLU and partner organizations to DHS and ICE supervisors catalogued over 45 allegations of abuse and serious injuries from detainees at Camp East Montana. These included a teenager who alleged that guards slammed him to the ground, blocked security cameras, and crushed his testicles as punishment. Two separate detainees independently reported the same form of sexual abuse and physical torture.
Measles, Tuberculosis, and COVID-19 Outbreak
On February 7, 2026, two cases of tuberculosis and 18 cases of COVID-19 were confirmed at Camp East Montana. Then, by early March 2026, at least 14 active measles cases were reported, with 112 additional people being isolated. The facility was closed to all visitors and attorneys until at least March 19-20. Detainees with measles were being transported to local El Paso hospitals, raising alarms about spread into the wider community.
Rep. Escobar stated that “a preventable crisis has created conditions where detainees can only access their lawyers virtually.” She and over two dozen Congressional Democrats had already sent a letter to DHS on February 26 calling for the facility to be shut down and for an investigation into Acquisition Logistics LLC for potential fraud.
Medical advocates reported that pregnant women, diabetics, and HIV-positive detainees had been unable to obtain care. A man with a broken foot had been on the medical waiting list since September. A 2-month-old infant detained at a separate Texas facility was hospitalized after choking on his own vomit. Over 1,000 medical care complaints were logged at another Texas center in under a year.
ICE Moves to Close - But Detainees Will Be Dispersed
On March 4, 2026, the Washington Post reported that ICE was in the process of closing Camp East Montana, having distributed a document to staff indicating the agency was drafting a letter to terminate Acquisition Logistics LLC’s contract. The camp’s population had already been reduced to approximately 1,500 - roughly half its January peak.
But this is not liberation. It is dispersal. While Camp East Montana faces closure, the Trump administration has simultaneously purchased industrial warehouses in El Paso for $123 million to create new detention facilities. The administration has sought to bring over 100,000 detention beds online in 2026 - a figure that would make the U.S. immigration detention system rival the entire federal criminal prison system.
PART III: The Pattern - Build, Fill, Abuse, Close, Repeat
2025 Was the Deadliest Year for ICE Detention on Record
According to the American Immigration Council’s 2025 year-end report, 2025 was the deadliest year for ICE detention on record since 2004. December 2025 was the single deadliest month ever documented. And 2026 is tracking to be worse. ICE is regularly “releasing” individuals from custody shortly before they die in nearby hospitals, allowing it to avoid counting those deaths in official figures - a practice the ACLU has litigated against for years.
Detention Inc: A Private Industry of Immigrant Detention Centers | AULA Blog
A 2,450% Increase in Detention of People with No Criminal Record
By November 2025, the number of people with no criminal record held in ICE detention had increased by 2,450% since January. The total detained population had grown nearly 75% to almost 66,000 people - the highest level in American history. For every one person released from ICE custody pending a hearing, 14.3 people were deported directly from detention. Discretionary releases fell 87% in 2025.
The number of non-criminal detainees arrested by ICE has surged by 2,000% under Trump. These charts show who’s in detention. - CBS News
Lawyers Systematically Blocked From Clients
Across facilities, attorneys have reported being denied access to clients, having appointments canceled without notice, watching clients transferred to other facilities before legal meetings, and finding their clients pressured to sign self-deportation documents without translation or legal counsel. Multiple federal judges across jurisdictions have flagged these practices as constitutional violations - but injunctions have been stayed, jurisdictions disputed, and oversight gutted.
DHS Gutted Its Own Oversight Mechanisms
In March 2025, DHS made sweeping cuts to the divisions responsible for overseeing conditions in ICE detention facilities. As Eunice Cho of the ACLU National Prison Project stated: “Immigration detention has always been a dangerous place. What we are seeing is the clear degradation of accountability measures over conditions of confinement in detention facilities.” Without oversight, abuse is not an anomaly - it is the operating standard.
Congress Approved $45 Billion More
On July 1, 2025 - the same day Alligator Alcatraz opened - the U.S. Senate approved a budget reconciliation bill including $45 billion for immigration detention expansion, a 265% increase to ICE’s annual detention budget. This ensures that regardless of how many individual facilities are closed amid scandal, the infrastructure for mass indefinite detention will continue to grow.
State Democrats pushing bills to insulate Colorado from federal policies they call intrusive
Conclusion: A Closure Is Not Reform
The closure of Camp East Montana, if and when it happens, is being driven not by moral accountability but by the collapse of a contractor that apparently could not meet even the minimum standards it was paid $1.2 billion to fulfill. The detainees inside will be dispersed to other facilities - many of which have their own documented records of abuse, disease, and death. People who were deported from Alligator Alcatraz without ever speaking to a lawyer are living in countries they fear, having signed documents they did not understand under duress.
This is the blueprint. Build fast, skip oversight, deny access, deport people before lawyers can intervene, erase detainees from databases, and when conditions collapse into undeniable crisis - close the facility, absorb the bodies into a larger and growing system, and announce a new one. What is needed is not facility-by-facility outrage management. What is needed is an end to the expansion of a system that has been documented - by ICE’s own oversight unit, by federal courts, by the county medical examiner, and by Amnesty International - to produce torture, enforced disappearance, and death.
Sources & Citations
[1] Wikipedia: Alligator Alcatraz — Full Overview
[3] Amnesty International: Torture and Enforced Disappearances in the Sunshine State (Dec. 2025 PDF)
[4] Project Censored: Detainees Missing from ICE Database After Entering Alligator Alcatraz (Dec. 2025)
[5] Military.com / AP: Detainees Say They Were Punished for Seeking Legal Help (Jan. 2026)
[6] WGCU/PBS: Attorneys Urge Judge to Visit Alligator Alcatraz (Dec. 2025)
[7] CBS Miami: Migrants in US Detention Centers Face Dire Conditions (Feb. 2026)
[8] Wikipedia: Camp East Montana — Full Overview
[9] Texas Tribune: What You Need to Know About Texas ICE Detention Deaths (Feb. 2026)
[10] Texas Tribune: 14 Measles Cases Reported at Camp East Montana (March 2026)
[11] Texas Tribune: ICE Moving Toward Closing Camp East Montana (March 4, 2026)
[12] NBC New York: ICE Confirms Measles Outbreak at Nation’s Largest Detention Facility (March 2026)
[13] El Paso Matters: 13 Measles Cases at Camp East Montana (Feb. 2026)
[14] American Immigration Council: Immigration Detention Expansion in Trump’s Second Term (Jan. 2026)
[15] American Immigration Council: ICE’s Expanding and Unaccountable Detention System (Feb. 2026)
[16] Wikipedia: List of Deaths in ICE Detention
[17] NPR: ICE is Reopening Shuttered Prisons as Detention Centers (Dec. 2025)
[18] PBS: Deportations Begin from Alligator Alcatraz (July 2025)
