DHS reported another detainee death yesterday, on the 18th. This is the third detainee death in this Texas facility since it opened in August, and the sixth detainee death under ICE custody in January.
EL PASO, Texas — Victor Manuel Diaz, a 36-year-old illegal alien from Nicaragua, died in ICE custody Jan. 14 at Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas. He was pronounced deceased at 4:09 p.m. https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/ice-reports-death-illegal-alien-custody-el-paso
First, why did they take four days to report this death?
Camp East Montana is the same ICE facility where Geraldo Lunas Campos, a Cuban immigrant was murdered on January 3rd, 2026. His death to be classified as a homicide by the medical examiner per the Washington Post.
An employee of El Paso County’s Office of the Medical Examiner told Lunas Campos’s daughter this week that, subject to results of a toxicology report, the office is likely to classify the death as a homicide, according to a recording of the conversation.
In the recording, which the daughter shared with The Washington Post, the employee said a doctor there “is listing the preliminary cause of death as asphyxia due to neck and chest compression,” which means Lunas Campos did not get enough oxygen because of pressure on his neck and chest. Pending the results of a toxicology report, the staffer said on the recording, “our doctor is believing that we’re going to be listing the manner of death as homicide.”
I want to highlight these two statements from DHS about Campos’ death:
Earlier that day, Lunas became disruptive while in line for medication and refused to return to his assigned dorm. He was subsequently placed in segregation. While in segregation, staff observed him in distress and contacted on-site medical personnel for assistance. Medical staff responded, initiated lifesaving measures, and requested emergency medical services. Lunas was pronounced deceased by EMS. https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/ice-reports-aggravated-felon-and-convicted-child-sex-offenders-death-camp-east
“Campos violently resisted the security staff and continued to attempt to take his life,” McLaughlin said. “During the ensuing struggle, Campos stopped breathing and lost consciousness. Medical staff was immediately called and responded. After repeated attempts to resuscitate him, EMTs declared him deceased on the scene.” -WP
Now compare that to the statement made by another detainee who witnessed the incident:
In an interview with The Post, Santos Jesus Flores, a man who says he was detained in the segregation unit the day Lunas Campos died, said he saw at least five guards struggling with Lunas Campos after he refused to enter the segregation unit, complaining that he didn’t have his medications. Flores said he saw guards choking Lunas Campos and heard Lunas Campos repeatedly saying, “No puedo respirar” — Spanish for “I can’t breathe.” Medical staff tried to resuscitate him for an hour, after which they took his body away, Flores said.
“He said, ‘I cannot breathe, I cannot breathe.’ After that, we don’t hear his voice anymore and that’s it,” said Flores, who had contacted a family member of Lunas Campos, who in turn put him in touch with a Post reporter. The Post confirmed Flores was in Camp East Montana through ICE’s detainee locator.
If you’ve followed my work you’ll know that the pattern of DHS lies is undeniable. After every major incident DHS will put out a statement claiming that their agents “feared for their lives” or “fired defensive shots” or “acted according to their training and the law.” And then subsequent video and witness testimony proves that the DHS statements were lies, meant to cover up the illegal actions of their agents.
In this latest death “ICE stated the death is a presumed suicide, though the official cause remains under investigation.” All we know is what DHS has released. But Victor Manuel Diaz died just eight days after Geraldo Lunas Campos, and Campos’ death is being ruled as a homicide by the medical examiner with first-hand witness testimony who saw guards choking Campos to death. At the same $1.24bn Ft. Bliss camp named Camp East Montana.
Diaz is the third person to die at Camp East Montana.
9 December, 2025 -“Earlier today, my office was notified by a local stakeholder about the recent death of a detainee at Camp East Montana. ICE did not notify Congress directly until nearly a week after the death and hours after our office inquired with relevant Congressional committees earlier today. https://escobar.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=3012
24 December, 2025 - A Guatemalan man has become the first person to die in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the Fort Bliss army base in Texas. His wife of 25 years was deported from the same camp without a chance to see her dying husband.
Francisco Gaspar-Andrés, 48, died on 3 December at a hospital in El Paso, as Democratic lawmakers and immigration advocates were ramping up demands that the camp be closed down amid allegations of inhumane conditions there. The DHS has said such allegations are “categorically false”.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/24/man-dies-ice-custody-wife-deported
Look at that clear pattern, ICE waited nearly a week before notifying congress of the first death at Camp East Montana.
$1.24bn Concentration Camp
This camp was opened on Ft. Bliss in August of 2025 and came with a $1.24 billion dollar price tag. The Washington Post reported in September that federal government’s detention oversight unit of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reported 60 violations of ICE’s own federal standards for immigrant detention.
That’s ICE’s own reporting that this $1.24bn Texas facility, also known as Camp East Montana, violated 60 federal standards in September of 2025.
“There is no way that this facility should be operating with their current numbers, let alone expanding,” Michelle Brané, the former head of the federal Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman under President Joe Biden, said after reviewing a copy of the report provided by The Post. She called it among the most concerning detention center audits she had ever seen and said the violations “will directly affect safety in very serious ways.”
In an interview with The Post, Chavez, 57, said it was obvious to him that Camp East Montana was brand new and poorly managed. He said that he was fed cookies, candies and potato chips in lieu of meals, that he was allowed only infrequent outdoor recreation, and that problems with the building caused water to seep into his cell when people used the showers.
“You have to keep drying it,” he said via a recorded voice memo in Spanish.
I kept coming across the terms “tent city”, “large white tents”, and “sprawling tents” in my research and the images were striking. Large white tents surrounded by empty desert. It’s eerily reminiscent of CECOT, the infamous El Salvadorian super-prison where “no one leaves alive.”
$1.24 BILLION for tents??
Acquisition Logistics LLC is the Virginia business awarded this contract. They are listed on GSA.gov as a veteran owned small business.
Their address on record, 502 BRANWAY DR HENRICO, VA 23229-7015. Here’s what Google maps shows of that address. Just some random house, that’s who was awarded $1.24 billion dollars by the federal government to build a tent city on Ft. Bliss.
Their website, https://www.acq-log.com only displays a login page.
How did this company with no headquarters, no employees, no website win a $1.24 billion dollar bid from the federal government?
Mother Jones has good reporting on this story:
The program’s bidders are limited to small businesses, Tiefer explains, allowing the government to sidestep serious competition. It’s like “a guy who is running a one-taxi firm” getting a “giant transportation contract,” he says. “There’s no question that this job is going to be entirely done by the subcontractors.” And that’s the point, he adds.
Among the subcontractors is Disaster Management Group, owned by big-time Republican donor Nathan Albers, who spent time at Mar-a-Lago and once co-chaired a fundraiser at Trump National Golf Club with the president’s son Eric, according to ProPublica, which also reported that Albers’ previous company, TentLogix, had pleaded guilty in 2019 to hiring undocumented workers and then using a shell company to hide the fact from immigration authorities. DMG is “a friend of Trump,” notes Tiefer, and Acquisition Logistics is “a front.” Adds Trickler-McNulty: The Fort Bliss deal is “a giant pass-through to other companies.” (Neither DMG nor Acquisition Logistics answered questions for this story.)
The Government Accountability Office launched an investigation of the deal, but construction began anyway. In July, a Disaster Management subcontractor died in a workplace accident. By August, a month after Acquisition Logistics snagged the deal and shortly before a federal judge ordered Alligator Alcatraz closed (an order since overturned on appeal), the new site began accepting detainees. And in September, ICE’s own inspectors found that conditions at the facility violated at least 60 federal standards for immigrant detention, according to a Washington Post report that DHS dismissed as “fearmongering clickbait.” Contractors, the Post reported, did not provide proper medical care, lacked basic procedures to keep detainees safe, and for weeks did not give them a way to contact lawyers or file complaints. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/10/acquisition-logistics-ice-fort-bliss-detention-center-billion-dollar-contract/
The $1.24 billion contract extends until September of 2027 when the tent city is expected to be completed. The camp is expected to hold 5,000 detainees but has been operating at a capacity of 1,000-1,500 detainees. This contract awards $1.24 billion between August of 2025 and September of 2027. Even operating at full capacity, which it hasn’t been, this would mean the federal government is paying $124,000 per detainee per year for this facility.
These monsters are grifting from the kidnapping and enslavement of human beings. Really returning to the USA’s roots I suppose.
Subcontractor Employed Undocumented Workers
Acquisition Logistics, run out of the small single family home in Virginia is a front. The real beneficiaries of this contract are the subcontractors, one of whom has been caught previously employing undocumented workers and conceal them from immigration officials, and found to have stolen $16 million in wages by the Department of Labor.
[O]ne of the subcontractors slated to work on the project, Disaster Management Group, is owned by Nathan Albers, who previously co-owned a company that pleaded guilty in 2019 to a scheme to hire undocumented workers and conceal them from immigration authorities. Albers is a big-time Republican donor who has spent time at Mar-a-Lago.
Two people with direct knowledge of the award and two familiar with the company told ProPublica that Disaster Management Group would help build the new facility, receiving a substantial chunk of the more than $1.2 billion the government has allocated for the project.
“The idea that you could use illegal labor and then sell services to ICE, the irony is thick,” said Scott Shuchart, a former official with the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during President Donald Trump’s first term and later under President Joe Biden, referring to the immigration case involving TentLogix, the company Albers once co-owned.
https://www.propublica.org/article/nathan-albers-fort-bliss-immigration
This company just gets worse, on January 29th, 2024 the Department of Labor released a press statement announcing that they’d recovered $16 million of wages and benefits stolen from 2,800 workers by Disaster Management Group.
After 75 investigations that included Jupiter, Florida-based Disaster Management Group LLC, one of the project’s general contractors, and 61 subcontractors, the department’s Wage and Hour Division found DMG and its subcontractors violated federal law, including the McNamara-O’Hara Service Contract Act, the Davis-Bacon Act, the Contract Work Hours and Safety Standards Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act and Executive Order 13706, by failing to:
Pay minimum prevailing wage rates to workers.
Pay fringe benefits.
Pay proper overtime.
Offer required paid sick leave under Executive Order 13706.
Properly classify workers as employees in their appropriate trades according to the work they performed.
Maintain required records, including segregating any benefits that may have been paid from wages.
Provide required notices to workers informing them of their rights under federal law.
This man, Nathan Albert, is profiting off of the deaths of immigrants. He steals wages from his workers and he places his workers in deadly situations, in July one of his workers was killed in an accident while building Camp East Montana on Ft. Bliss. He regularly attends trump events at Mar-A-Lago, has donated millions to trump and Republicans in Congress. Let’s make him famous.
Thank you for reporting on this!
🥲🥲🥲 I’m so sad that this regime has really shown what our country is truly harboring. Racism has not been gone, just hiding 😪😪😪