Immigrant detainees are sharing new complaints of physical abuse and neglect by officers at Camp East Montana, one of the nation's largest ICE detention centers.
A November investigation by Scripps News discovered reports of poor conditions and mistreatment at the camp located on the grounds of the Fort Bliss Army base in El Paso, Texas.
Now dozens more detainees are speaking out in declarations collected by the American Civil Liberties Union. The records provide detailed accounts of excessive physical force by staff at the site, including claims of guards punching, stomping on and slamming detainees to the ground.
"These are real human beings who have expressed to us that they are experiencing severe mistreatment at this detention center and that their basic needs are not being met," said Savannah Kumar, staff attorney for the ACLU of Texas.
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The declarations from detainees include diagrams of bodies marked with the location of multiple injuries each person says they suffered inside the center.
In one case, a 19-year-old detainee says officers blocked a security camera before violently grabbing his testicles and beating him.
"My consciousness faded in the medical tent," the man wrote in his declaration. "When I regained consciousness, I was in an ambulance on the way to the hospital."
The detainee statements show a pattern of guards using excessive force.
"There are many accounts of people who experienced these beatings while already being restrained and in handcuffs," Kumar said.
Immigrant detainees also say they are not getting the medical care they need. After one man fainted, guards allegedly left him on the ground in a puddle of his own blood.
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At mealtime rather than help the man, the officers "left the man's meal on his bed," a detainee said.
Scripps News' own investigation found reports of expired food, undrinkable water, leaking bunk rooms and lack of access to attorneys.
The Camp East Montana detention center is a tent city that sprouted in the desert this year, run by an obscure private company based out of a home in Virginia. Acquisitions Logistics LLC won a $1.2 billion government contract to build and operate the lockup and has never responded to questions from Scripps News.
The company appears to rely on a network of for-profit subcontractors to operate Camp East Montana, with as many as 300 employees on site.
Kumar said detainees were unsure whether the officers allegedly abusing them worked for private companies or were agents working for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
"This goes back to the lack of transparency at this detention center," Kumar said. "That's a problem that we run into over and over and makes it really hard to answer that question."
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to Scripps News inquiries about conditions at the detention center but instead sent a statement that said, in part: "This is fearmongering clickbait ... any claim that there are 'inhumane' conditions at ICE detention centers (is) categorically false. No detainees are being beaten or abused."
Adding to the scrutiny of this camp is the recent death of a detainee.
Francisco Gaspar-Andres, a 48-year-old immigrant from Guatemala, spent two months at Camp East Montana before being sent to a hospital, where ICE says he died of "natural liver and kidney failure."
