El Paso, Texas — The long white tents, visible to anyone driving across East El Paso, Texas, are designed to be part of the biggest immigration holding facility in U.S. history, with a capacity for as many as 5,000 immigrants.
“That’s what it is, a giant tent city,” Democratic Rep. Veronica Escobar of Texas, who has been inside twice, told CBS News. “…There are hard floors. There are walls that go up, probably about three-quarters of the way to the ceiling.”
Escobar said she saw about 1,500 people inside during her last visit two weeks ago.
The government awarded Acquisition Logistics a $1.24 billion contract to build and operate the detention center, dubbed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement as Camp East Montana, which opened last month.
A house in suburban Richmond, Virginia, is listed as the headquarters of Acquisition Logistics and has no public record of running a detention facility before this one.
Acquisition Logistics did not reply to messages from CBS News.
The government has built the facility on the edge of Fort Bliss, an Army post. But the immigration facility is nowhere near anything that resembles an active military base. It’s in the middle of sand dunes and scrub brush.
Fort Bliss and El Paso have a long history with immigration. Unaccompanied children stayed there under former President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama.
“I just would like to be a little more vigilant about what is going on in there,” El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego told CBS News. “I want to see it. I want to make sure.”
CBS News requested access to the facility, and asked to speak to Department of Homeland Security and ICE officials about conditions for detainees, but access was denied and they declined to comment.
“One of the things I heard repeatedly from the men who I spoke to…was that the food was so bad that it was making them sick,” Escobar said.
Escobar said some of the men inside told her they were moved to EL Paso from Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” after the government emptied that immigration detention facility to comply with a judge’s order. However, last week, a federal appeals court temporarily halted the judge’s order, effectively allowing “Alligator Alcatrez” to stay open.
“They are told nothing,” Escobar said of the detainees. “They are given no information. They don’t know if they’re going to be moved to another facility. They don’t know if they’re going to be deported. It’s like a black box for them.”
Jason Allen is a CBS News correspondent based in Dallas/Fort Worth. He was previously a reporter with CBS News Texas.
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