The Trump administration plans to use a major engineering and electronic services company to run the nation’s largest facility where one inmate is being held and two others have died.
The Department of Homeland Security intends to award a no-bid contract to operate Camp East Montana and manage detainees in Chantilly, Virginia-based Amentum Services Inc. The company will replace Acquisition Logistics, a Richmond, Virginia-based subcontractor hired by DHS last July for $1.2 billion to build and operate an ICE facility at the Fort Bliss, US Army, Texas base in El Paso.
NBC News reported earlier this month that ICE was reevaluating the future of Camp East Montana.
Ametum was the contractor for the sprawling tented facility, which has been under constant surveillance since its construction. The facility, which was housing nearly 3,000 immigrants in mid-February, was quickly shut down to advance President Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan, which calls for doubling space nationwide. Camp East Montana was intended to hold up to 5,000 immigration detainees.
In January, three inmates had died in custody at Camp East Montana. The death of Jan. 3 of Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55, of Cuban origin, was determined to be “incapacitated due to compression of the neck and trunk,” according to the final autopsy report.
The facility also experienced outbreaks of tuberculosis and measles.
A DHS spokesperson previously told NBC News that the Acquisition Logics contract was “inherited” from the Department of Defense and that DHS was reviewing the agency and the contract.
Ametum and Acquisition Logistics did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment about the contracts. DHS and ICE did not immediately provide comment.
DHS said in a post about the contract award to Ametum that it was due to the immediate provision of housing, medical care, transportation and compliance with ICE’s 2025 detention standards. It said the action was “necessary” for uninterrupted operations “after the termination of the existing contract.” The new contract is for approximately 180 days.
Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, has been a vocal critic of the agency and its many issues. In a March 4 news conference, he called it “an example of fraud, waste, abuse, and exploitation of human suffering at the hands of private prison companies and the Trump administration.”
In a statement Wednesday, Escobar said “while I am relieved that Acquisition Logistics has been fired by DHS, they should be investigated for the fraud they committed on the American taxpayer.”
“Whether the new contractor is any better remains to be seen, and I’m still very concerned about the substandard conditions at Camp East Montana,” he said. “That tent facility must be closed, and the ICE program to detain 8500 people in Socorro must be terminated.”
DHS signed a $122.8 million contract for an 826,000-square-foot warehouse in Socorro, an El Paso suburb with a population of about 40,000, the Associated Press reported. The space is big enough to fit 4 1/2 Walmart Supercenters, the AP reports.
The other two detainees who died at Camp East Montana are Francisco Gaspar-Andres, 48, of Guatemalan origin, and Victor Manuel Diaz, 36, of Nicaraguan origin.
Gaspar-Andres died at an El Paso hospital on December 3. In a news conference on Dec. 5, ICE said the cause of his death is pending but “medical staff said it was due to natural liver and kidney failure.”
Diaz, who had been arrested in Minneapolis, was found “unconscious and unresponsive” in his room by contract security, a DHS news release said. ICE said Diaz’s death on Jan. 14 was thought to be a suicide, but the death is under investigation.
Diaz’s family attorney, Randall Kallinen, told NBC News Thursday that the autopsy was performed by the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System at William Beaumont Army Medical Center at Fort Bliss, rather than by the county medical examiner as mandated by DHS contract guidelines.
Kallinen said he has received the military’s autopsy report, but is waiting to release it until he compares its results with those of an independent autopsy conducted on the family.
