Suit filed against ICE’s Camp East Montana operations over alleged “inhumane” conditions

The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, the ACLU, Texas Civil Rights Project, Human Rights Watch, and the law firm Farella Braun + Martel LLP are the several entities that documented in their filing accounts of alleged rights violations, including:

• Severe medical neglect and disease outbreaks, including a months-long measles outbreak that infected at least 14 people.
• Violent uses of force by officers against detained immigrants and coercive threats of deportation.
• Excessive use of solitary confinement to punish people for requesting basic needs like medical care or hygiene.
• Inadequate and rancid food that have caused detained people to lose extreme amounts of weight.
• Exposure to dust storms through openings in tent walls that subjects people to respiratory disease.
• Dangerous and unsanitary living conditions in the tent camp, among other rights violations.

One of the named plaintiffs, Gerald Akari Angye, in the suit said the following in a hand written statement:

“The conditions here in this ICE tent camp in a desert are inhumane and cruel. No human being should ever have to go through this. I have already experienced torture in my home country of Cameroon and I never thought I would experience such severely violent treatment by guards here in the United States of America. I have been beaten here and even today, I still have a brace on my hands and wrist. I am in pain and I am scared to be here. No one deserves such cruel treatment. We are all humans and deserve to be treated like it.”

Below is the 78 page lawsuit that the ACLU and the other entities have brought against ICE regarding Camp East Montana: