El Paso ICE processing center detainees face ‘widespread human rights violations,’ Amnesty International report finds
by May 14, 2025
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Detained migrants and immigrants at an El Paso processing center face widespread human rights violations, including systematic mistreatment, arbitrary detention, as well as lack of due process and access to legal resources, according to a report by Amnesty International released Wednesday.
“Many individuals … expressed that one of the hardest parts of being in detention was the uncertainty about how long they would have to remain in detention, and many expressed frustration, hopelessness and concerns about whether they would ever receive a decision about their situation,” the report states. “The constantly changing legal and political landscape also contributes to fear for themselves and their families.”
The report, “Dehumanized by Design: Human Rights Violations in El Paso,” by the Nobel Peace Prize-winning nongovernmental human rights organization, shares its findings and observations from an April 10 visit to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s El Paso Service Processing Center. The report includes interviews with detained migrants, as well as with legal, humanitarian and social service providers in El Paso.
The El Paso processing center has “substandard or inhumane detention conditions” that do not meet international – or ICE – standards for detention as outlined in the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (known as the Nelson Mandela Rules) and the ICE Performance Based National Detention Standards, the report concludes.
Amnesty International focused on the impact of ICE detention on human rights following the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, including executive orders for mass deportations and detention, as well as the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act targeting Venezuelans.
Enacted in 1798, the act gave the president broad authority to detain or deport non-citizens from countries with whom the U.S. was at war – leading many human rights groups and Democratic lawmakers to call the invocation illegal as the United States is currently not at war with Venezuela or any other country.
The report includes a handful of recommendations to the government, including that Congress not fund the mass deportation system sought by the Trump administration, end the practice of mass immigration detention, and guarantee the safe and immediate return to the United States of all persons expelled to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act executive order.
More than 47,600 people are being detained in about 140 facilities across the country – nearly half of whom have no criminal charges, the report states. ICE is currently funded for 41,500 beds, which has forced migrants to sleep on floors at overcapacity detention centers, the Washington Post reported. The Trump administration is now seeking over $200 billion to expand immigration enforcement and triple the current detention bed capacity to 150,000.
‘No way to live’
Of the 81 people at the El Paso center who signed up to speak with Amnesty International on the condition of anonymity, ICE officials selected 27 – men and women – to be interviewed. Only nine of the 27 had legal counsel. No Venezuelan men – who are the most frequent targets designation under the Enemy Aliens Act – were included in the list of people to be interviewed. The organization also interviewed a handful of detainees after its visit to the center.
Many of those interviewed said they had been apprehended by ICE or local law enforcement agents outside of El Paso in the country’s interior and transferred to ICE custody in El Paso. Many have pending asylum claims.
Amnesty International in its report stated that many of those at the ICE center expressed wanting to request voluntary departure, believing it was the only way they’d be released from detention.
“I was stopped for a traffic reason, and they detained me,” one woman who is six months pregnant told Amnesty International. She said dinner is served at 4 p.m. and she’s only sometimes given an apple or a cookie in the evening.
“Now I just want to get out of here. Officials want to abuse you because they can, they have a bad attitude and it’s horrible how they talk to you. I will gladly go back to Colombia. I do not want to have my baby in this place.”
Two other women reported fleeing political violence and torture in Brazil, entering the United States at the Ciudad Juárez-El Paso border. They’ve been in detention for three months with no attorney, access to documents or communication with family members, according to the report.
Some detainees recounted how some people are called out of their sleeping areas in the middle of the night to be transferred or deported without legal representation.
One migrant asked to be deported back to his home country of Venezuela but was instead sent to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and transferred to a detention center in South Texas before being sent to El Salvador, according to an El Paso migrant services organization. The migrant’s wife remains in a separate detention facility – and their child is in foster care in El Paso.
One man reported being transferred to four different detention centers in two months.
Another who has lived in the country with a green card for nearly 40 years said he’s been in detention for seven months.
“I have three U.S. citizen kids. When they came and took me, a family member took my kids. My middle child has autism. They kicked him out. I don’t know where my son is. I’m really stressed for my kids,” he said, adding that he had sole custody of the children because the state took them away from their mother.
Amnesty International in its reports said it’s also concerned by “accounts of physical abuse and arbitrary discipline by guards, use of solitary confinement, unhygienic living areas without functioning toilets, consumption of expired and nutrient-deficient food.”
One man reported seeing a detainee beaten by guards for cutting in a food line.
“This is no way to live,” one detainee told Amnesty International. “We just want to have a sense of what is happening and what our options are.”
Estrella del Paso, a Catholic nonprofit that provides immigration legal services, is cited in the report as one of the organizations impacted by Trump’s crackdown on immigration as the U.S. Department of Justice terminated its legal orientation and immigration court help desk programs April 15.
The legal orientation program works inside the El Paso Service Processing Center and the Otero County Processing Center in Southern New Mexico, but Estrella del Paso representatives have not had access to individuals detained there.
The organization and others are suing the administration. A spokeswoman for Estrella del Paso said the organization could not comment beyond what’s in the report while it has pending litigation.
“People don’t understand that these (legal orientation) programs we offer are critical because what we do is give people information so that they can decide about how to proceed,” Estrella del Paso Executive Director Melissa López states in the report. “Now, the first time someone will explain their legal rights and process to them will be when they are already before a judge.”
