Eyes on ICE | Investigative Report
Measles virus (Paramyxovirus) particles captured via transmission electron microscopy. Image: CDC Public Health Image Library, PHIL #8430, public domain.
There is a measles outbreak inside a billion-dollar federal immigration detention facility in El Paso, Texas. It has been spreading for three weeks. Nobody told the public. Nobody told the congressional representative whose district the facility sits in. Nobody told the lawyers trying to reach their clients inside. The guards and staff working every shift walked in, walked out, and went home to their families while it spread.
That is not negligence. That is a choice. And it is being made with your money.
What Is Happening Right Now
Camp East Montana is a sprawling ICE detention center on the outskirts of El Paso. As of February, approximately 1,800 people were being held there, down from a peak of 3,100 in January. It is on track to become one of the largest immigration detention facilities in the United States.
As of March 3, there are 14 confirmed active cases of measles inside the facility and at least two confirmed cases of tuberculosis. One hundred and twelve individuals are currently under quarantine. Lawyers representing detainees have been barred from making in-person visits. Attorneys can only reach their clients virtually, if at all.
Crystal Sandoval, a legal representative with the immigration rights group Las Americas, was among those told she could not enter the facility to meet with a potential client. She told the El Paso Times that the measles cases had been spreading inside Camp East Montana for at least three weeks before the quarantine was announced.
Three weeks.
U.S. Representative Veronica Escobar of El Paso stated on March 3 that her office was never informed of the outbreak or the quarantine. She found out after the fact, the same way the rest of us did.
Soap. They Withheld Soap.
The measles outbreak at Camp East Montana is not a surprise. It is not a fluke. It is not an unfortunate coincidence. It is the direct, documented, foreseeable consequence of conditions that civil rights attorneys, former detainees, and Representative Escobar have been raising alarms about since the facility first opened in August.
Charlotte Weiss, an attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project, put it plainly: “The measles outbreak at Camp East Montana is a heartbreaking and foreseeable result of a facility that deprives individuals of soap and delays the provision of critical medical care. For months, the facility has been on notice of its abuses and refuses to improve its conditions.”
Soap. In a facility that received 1.24 billion dollars in taxpayer funds, they withheld soap.
Representative Escobar has documented consistently subpar access to hygiene products, janitorial services, and laundry throughout the facility’s operation. The El Paso Times recorded nearly 90 emergency 911 calls placed from inside Camp East Montana in just its first 15 weeks of operation. The American Civil Liberties Union documented acts of physical violence against detainees and reported that guards subjected people to verbal abuse, including being called donkeys, and made threats against detainees’ loved ones.
Former detainees who were deported before anyone could formally document their accounts described to the El Paso Times regular flooding and deeply unsanitary conditions inside the facility. Ricardo Andrade Mosquera, deported to southern Mexico, gave detailed testimony about conditions. Lucia Pedro Juan, the widow of Francisco Gaspar Cristobal Andres, the first detainee to die at the facility in December 2025, stated that medical attention was almost entirely nonexistent. Representative Escobar has raised serious concern that Cristobal Andres died as a direct result of medical neglect.
A second detainee, Geraldo Lunas Campos, was ruled a homicide by the El Paso County Office of the Medical Examiner. A third detainee, Victor Manuel Diaz, was reported by ICE as a suicide. The autopsy has never been released.
Three people are dead. Two of those deaths remain without full public accounting. And now measles and tuberculosis are spreading through a quarantined population of over 100 people inside those same walls.
Clinical presentation of measles rash, documented by public health officials. Image: CDC Public Health Image Library, PHIL #3168, public domain.
To Everyone Who Works There: You Are Not Safe Either
This section is not directed at the detainees. This section is directed at every guard, every intake officer, every support staffer, every logistics employee, and every medical contractor employed by Loyal Source who badges into Camp East Montana and badges back out at the end of their shift.
You are not protected from this because you have a uniform or an employee ID. Measles does not check your badge before it makes a decision about your lungs. Tuberculosis does not distinguish between the person in the cell and the person who locked it.
Measles is one of the most contagious airborne diseases in recorded human history. A single infected person can transmit the virus to 90 percent of unimmune people in the same space. The virus survives on surfaces and in the air for up to two hours after the infected person has left the room. It spreads before symptoms appear. You can be carrying it and spreading it before you know anything is wrong.
You walked out of a facility with 14 confirmed active measles cases and at least two tuberculosis cases. You went home. You hugged your kids. You sat across from your parents at dinner. You stopped at the pharmacy or the grocery store on the way home. You went back in the next morning and did it again, because you need the job and nobody told you what was spreading inside those walls for three weeks while the company cashed their billion-dollar check and said nothing.
The company that employs you took 1.24 billion dollars and withheld soap. They let a measles outbreak spread for three weeks without telling you, without telling the public, without telling the congressional representative for the district, and without telling the lawyers whose clients are quarantined inside. They did not do this because of an oversight. They did it because disclosure costs money and silence is free.
They are not going to protect you. They already proved that. You and your family are as expendable to Acquisition Logistics LLC and Loyal Source as every person locked inside that facility. The difference is that you get to leave. But you are not leaving clean.
We are not saying this to shame anyone for needing a paycheck. We are saying this because someone has to. The people running this operation are counting on you to keep showing up and not think too hard about what you are carrying home. Is the job worth your mother’s lungs? Is the stability worth your child’s exposure to a disease we had almost entirely eradicated before facilities like this one started manufacturing the conditions to bring it back?
Think hard about that.
The Contractor and the Billion Dollars
Company registered out of Henrico home receives contract to build Texas ICE detention facility
Acquisition Logistics LLC, based in Henrico, Virginia, received 1.24 billion dollars in taxpayer funds to construct and operate Camp East Montana. For that money, the United States government received a facility where detainees are denied soap, where medical attention is described as nearly nonexistent, where three people have died under circumstances that range from alleged neglect to ruled homicide, where 90 emergency calls were placed in 15 weeks, and where measles and tuberculosis spread unchecked and undisclosed for three weeks.
Loyal Source, the Orlando, Florida-based company contracted to provide medical services at the facility, is responsible for the healthcare infrastructure that failed to contain or disclose a communicable disease outbreak for three weeks inside a population of nearly 1,800 people.
Representative Escobar has been clear in her assessment: “Whether this has been deliberate on the part of the contractor, or a result of incompetence, the end result is the same: a violation of federal standards and outright fraud.”
She has called on the Department of Justice to investigate Acquisition Logistics LLC for fraud. She has again called on DHS to shut Camp East Montana down entirely. She wrote in her statement: “There has been nothing but crisis after crisis inside the walls of this tent city. I again renew my call for DHS to shut down Camp East Montana and for the Department of Justice to investigate the contractor for fraud.”
DHS has previously stated that quality medical care is provided at immigration detention centers and has denied allegations of mistreatment. As of publication, DHS and ICE have not responded to press requests for information about the quarantine.
This Was Preventable. Every Part of It.
Measles is a vaccine-preventable disease. It was declared eliminated in the United States in the year 2000. It comes back when people are crowded into spaces without adequate sanitation, without access to healthcare, and without the basic hygiene supplies that make disease prevention possible. It comes back when the people responsible for managing those spaces decide that spending the money to prevent it is less important than keeping the money they were paid to prevent it.
The Washington Post documented multiple violations during Camp East Montana’s construction. The ACLU documented ongoing physical abuse and coercive conditions inside. The El Paso Times documented 90 emergency calls in 15 weeks. Civil rights attorneys documented soap shortages. A congressional representative documented the lack of medical care in formal letters to DHS. Detainees documented all of it again in firsthand testimony after their deportations.
Every warning was raised. Every warning was ignored. And now there are 14 cases of measles, 2 cases of tuberculosis, 112 people in quarantine, 3 people dead, and a workforce going home to their communities every day carrying whatever comes next.
Representative Escobar said it clearly: “Despite what I was initially told about the level of medical care inside the facility, it became very clear to me early on that serious medical issues were being overlooked and, in some cases, medical attention was non-existent for urgent health issues.”
She knew. The attorneys knew. The detainees knew. The contractors knew. The disease knew too. It spread for three weeks before anyone in authority said a word.
What You Can Do
If you work at Camp East Montana or know someone who does: Contact a physician immediately about measles and tuberculosis exposure. Do not wait for your employer to tell you that you are at risk. The CDC measles resource is at cdc.gov/measles. You have a right to know your exposure status. Your family has a right to be protected.
If you are in the El Paso region: Contact Representative Veronica Escobar’s office directly. Her office is actively tracking conditions and needs constituent contact to maintain pressure on DHS and the contractors.
If you have documentation, photos, video, or testimony about conditions inside Camp East Montana: The Texas Civil Rights Project and Las Americas are both actively documenting abuses and representing detainees. Reach out to them directly.
If you want to track what your tax dollars are funding: The federal spending database at USASpending.gov allows you to search contract awards by company name. Look up Acquisition Logistics LLC and Loyal Source. The numbers are public. The receipts are there.
Camp East Montana should be closed. The contractors should be investigated. And every person working inside those walls should know exactly what they are being exposed to and what they are carrying home.
We will keep watching. We will keep reporting. And we will keep saying out loud what the people cashing those billion-dollar checks are counting on everyone to stay quiet about.
Sources: El Paso Times | Rep. Veronica Escobar official statement | Texas Civil Rights Project | Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center | CDC Public Health Image Library | American Civil Liberties Union | Washington Post | USASpending.gov
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