ICE

The Guardian -  The first lawsuit relating to the largest immigration detention facility in the US was filed early on Saturday against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), accusing the agency of “dire” conditions that severely violate the human and constitutional rights of those locked up at the camp in Texas.

A clutch of legal organizations is suing via a class-action complaint, listing four detainees as plaintiffs for themselves and on behalf of all those currently held as civil detainees at Camp East Montana or who will be held there in the future.

The facility is a sprawling tent camp in the desert on El Paso’s Fort Bliss military base, where the federal government has confined immigrants since last August, when it swiftly erected the tents.

The complaint alleges that conditions at the camp are “dangerous and abusive” as well as “squalid” for those detained, with injustices including, according to the lawsuit:

“[a]bhorrent medical and mental health care”;

“inappropriate use of force”;

“indiscriminate use of solitary confinement”;

“terrible, rotten, spoiled and inadequate” food;

“outbreaks of disease”;

“unsanitary living conditions”;

“sexual harassment by guards”.

The Guardian reached out to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the parent agency of ICE, and to ICE for comment. Late Saturday, a DHS spokesperson replied with a lengthy statement denying all accusations that proper medical care and food had been withheld from detainees, disputing there had been a spike in deaths in ICE custody, and asserting “claims that there are ‘inhumane’ conditions at Camp East Montana are categorically false. No detainees are being beaten or abused.”