A look at the immigrant detention center in Texas where many Minnesotans are being transferred

NINA MOINI: Immigrant and legal rights groups are calling for the federal government to close the nation's largest immigration detention center. Three people have died in custody at Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas, since the year began. That includes Víctor Manuel Diaz, who was arrested in Minneapolis and who died at the detention center last Wednesday.

ICE officials believe his death was a suicide, according to a press release, but it's under investigation. Attorneys in Minnesota say many of their clients who have been taken into ICE custody recently have been sent to Camp East Montana, sometimes within hours of arrest. Washington Post reporter Douglas MacMillan has been covering the detention center since before it opened in August, and he joins me now. Thank you so much for your time, Douglas.

DOUGLAS MACMILLAN: Hi. Thanks for having me.

NINA MOINI: Would you describe for us briefly just what Camp East Montana is, and where it came from?

DOUGLAS MACMILLAN: Yeah. This is essentially was an empty patch of desert near the southern border only about seven months ago when the Trump administration awarded a $1.2 billion contract to a group of contractors to develop that patch of desert into what would eventually become the largest detention center in the country.

And these are a number of contractors who started setting about building a series of large white tents. They now hold roughly 3,800 detainees, and they're projected to hold up to 5,000 people at some point soon. And what we've heard is that the race to build this site so quickly, these contractors have violated federal standards around immigrant detention.

And we learned that from ICE's own inspectors went there last summer, last fall, and found the site was not meeting federal standards. We do not know if they fixed that, if the situation has improved. But we do, as you mentioned, know that people are dying there. There's been three deaths in the past two months. And so questions are starting to come up. Why are people having these issues that are leading to detainee deaths?

NINA MOINI: Yeah. Tell me a little bit more about the reporting that you have. What were some of the regulations specifically that people are taking issue with, and then what was the response from DHS?

DOUGLAS MACMILLAN: Well, one that stands out now is that they did not initially have any kind of security plan. So they built this without any kind of plan for how guards would keep the site secure, which, as you know for a detention center, that should be kind of paramount.

Another big concern was medical screenings, to what extent they were conducting a full medical screening of everybody who came in the door to make sure that they're giving everybody the right kind of care and medicine they need while they're there. We don't know if that situation has improved. And we also understand that there hasn't been enough recreation area, and that many people have reported not seeing the sun for days or even weeks at a time because there are so few recreation areas to take people outside that they have to do it in very small groups.

And so these are some of the concerns of the detainees there. And we're just trying to keep-- there's no way for us to go inside to inspect it, and so we're trying to understand what we can from the reports that are coming out from detainees and from the lawyers and advocates that have been able to get inside to visit them.

NINA MOINI: And I have a quote here from Tricia McLaughlin that says, "This is the best healthcare that many aliens have received in their entire lives. Meals are certified by dietitians," going on and calling the reporting a smear and categorically false. When you can't prove what's going on and gain access, how are you doing your job as a reporter? How are you communicating with people? What are you relying on?

DOUGLAS MACMILLAN: Well, as best we can, we're trying to find people with access to verifiable information. So in the case of the man who died earlier this month, his name is Geraldo, Geraldo Lunas Campos. ICE initially put out a statement saying that there was no cause-- they didn't know the cause of death, that this man was put into a segregation unit, and staff found him in distress.

What my reporting showed is that a medical examiner who was reviewing his body told the family members of this man that he's likely to rule this death a homicide. And what we've learned since then from eyewitness accounts of this death is that there was a struggle with detention staff and that this man-- this eyewitness said that the man was choked to death by guards.

And so we're looking into that death. And we don't a final ruling from the medical examiner, but this is the kind of verifiable information-- a medical examiner, ICE's own inspectors who have gone there-- that we have to rely on when we're trying to learn facts about a situation at this facility.

NINA MOINI: There have been concerns about conditions in immigration detention centers under previous administrations. Some reporting from NPR there were more deaths in custody, though, in 2025, since 2004. So what do you think could be driving the higher numbers? Is it just collecting more people?

DOUGLAS MACMILLAN: Not only that, but there have been six deaths so far in the first two weeks of this year. So not only was it the highest year of deaths in decades, we are now in a situation of an accelerating crisis of deaths inside these facilities. Yes, there are more people going into these facilities, but I think that the rate of increase in deaths is outpacing the rate of increase in population.

And I think that there are very serious concerns about whether these facilities and the companies that are contracted-- many of these places are run by private companies-- whether they are equipped to handle the onslaught of detainees that are being swept up in many of these immigration raids. And the primary concern that my team, my colleagues and I, are exploring right now is the medical conditions inside these facilities.

I think that's paramount. I think we need to understand whether these people are getting access to appropriate medical care. But also things like the guards. The detention staff that are being assigned and paid to oversee these people and keep them safe, how have they been trained? What kind of oversight have they had? We don't very much about that, so we're trying to learn more and trying to understand, what is the situation for these people's safety?

NINA MOINI: What's your understanding, Douglas, of what's next in the investigations into these deaths? Are they criminal investigations, or are they more investigations within DHS to try to figure out their own protocols, or do you have a sense that it's not really being investigated?

DOUGLAS MACMILLAN: Well, DHS says that they're investigating at least the most recent two deaths. The most recent one from last week, they said, was a presumed suicide, but that they were continuing to investigate it. The one earlier in the month that I mentioned, Mr. Lunas Campos, the death that the medical examiner is calling a homicide, DHS has said that there is an investigation.

They have not said who is investigating. The man's family says that the FBI has called them and the FBI has started an investigation. But I have questions about that investigation, because in the wake of my reporting, two of the eyewitnesses I spoke to are now facing possible deportation.

So we've understood that since those people spoke to me and shared their story and bravely went on the record with their version of events, which now conflicts with the government's version of events, the government has taken steps to deport those people. So it does raise questions about-- it could be a coincidence.

These people are in detention and have been targeted for deportation. But generally, when you have a serious federal investigation into a potential crime, and you have eyewitnesses, you generally would not want to move those people out of the country because their eyewitness accounts would be important to getting the facts straight in that case.

NINA MOINI: Before I have to let you go, Douglas, I really appreciate you sharing your reporting with us. Can you give our listeners a sense for detention centers, this trend in increasing capacity? I'm reading here that DHS wants to expand detention capacity to more than 100,000 beds. Camp East Montana there in El Paso, you're saying, is now the largest one. Where are they all over the country? Can you just give us a sense for the prevalence of these detention centers?

DOUGLAS MACMILLAN: Yeah. It's changing quickly. The administration has really tried to ramp up the number of facilities. In the past, they have been concentrated primarily along the south. But all over the country, there's facilities in many of the states. But the administration is looking to not only increase the number of beds, but they are also trying to find ways to increase what they think is the efficiency of this system.

Currently, the way it operates is people are kind of shuttled around from one facility to the next based on where there is available space. And sometimes, this leads to people being kind of sent to two or three or four or five different facilities before they are deported or before their case gets officially heard and adjudicated. What we've heard the administration is working on now is a plan to, what they say-- they call it reengineering the detention system.

And what this means, or what they think this means, is creating sort of a hub and spoke model where they will create a number of new sites where people will be booked in for a few days or up to a couple of weeks, and then they will be sent to much larger detention warehouses. And these are going to be literally industrial warehouses that they plan to convert into mass staging grounds for deportation.

And so this plan is just taking shape. There are about 23 cities on a draft list going around right now in which they're planning to convert these warehouses. And we'll see if this ends up becoming the next kind of iteration of how this country does detention and whether or not it does increase the efficiency that they see as being able to enable these mass deportations and what the costs would be to housing people in a system like this.

Administration officials have openly compared their goal as running this more like a business, and that they see Amazon's logistics business as a model for how they want to move people around the country. ICE's acting director has said on the record that he believes it should be more like Amazon. Like Prime, but with human beings. And so I think that tells you a lot about how they're seeing this system and what their ambition is and where they want to go with it.

NINA MOINI: Douglas, thank you so much for sharing your reporting with us. We hope you'll come back sometime.

DOUGLAS MACMILLAN: Yeah, of course. Anytime. Thank you for having me.

NINA MOINI: Thank you. Douglas MacMillan is a reporter for The Washington Post. If you or someone you is in crisis or needs immediate mental health support, you can call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. For its part, DHS has said in part in a statement, quote, "At no time during detention is a detained illegal alien denied emergency care."