Staff members at the United States’ largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility reportedly placed wagers on which detainee would die by suicide next, according to a new investigation published by the Associated Press.
The report draws on 911 call records and firsthand accounts from detainees held at Camp East Montana, a sprawling tent facility located at Fort Bliss Army base near El Paso, Texas.
Owen Ramsingh, a legal permanent resident who spent several weeks inside the camp, told AP he personally overheard a security guard discussing an active betting pool centered on which detainee would next attempt to take their own life.
According to Ramsingh, the guard mentioned contributing $500 to the pot, with the entire sum going to whoever made the most accurate prediction.
The Department of Homeland Security denied the claim, with a spokesperson calling Ramsingh’s account a lie, though no further details were offered to support that denial.
Ramsingh was brought to the United States from the Netherlands at just five years old.
He had been living in Columbia, Missouri, married to an American citizen and holding a valid green card, until he was stopped at an airport by DHS and transferred to Camp East Montana.
In February, he was deported to the Netherlands over a teenage drug conviction for which he had already served prison time.
“Camp East Montana was 1,000% worse than a prison,” he said.
He added that hearing about the alleged suicide bets was particularly devastating, as he had himself contemplated suicide during his time there.
“Every day felt like a week. Every week felt like a month. Every month felt like a year,” Ramsingh said.
The deaths and near-deaths at the facility paint a grim picture.
In January, staff called 911 for Geraldo Lunas Campos, a 55-year-old Cuban national, after what DHS described as a suicide attempt.
A medical examiner later ruled his death a homicide.
That same month, a 36-year-old Nicaraguan man died by suicide at the facility.
The AP’s review of 130 calls made to 911, spanning just five months from mid-August through January 20, found that detainees attempted to harm themselves with suicidal intent on at least six additional occasions requiring emergency response.
Camp East Montana is comprised of six large tents on the Fort Bliss base and holds roughly 3,000 people on any given day.
The site has a dark history, as it previously served as an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II.
Detainees today report inadequate food supplies and a persistent lack of proper medical attention.
While ICE data suggests an average stay of around nine days, many detainees are held for months as immigration courts struggle to keep pace with the Trump administration’s sweeping mass detention and deportation campaign.
U.S. Representative Veronica Escobar, a Democrat representing part of El Paso who has personally toured the facility, did not mince words.
“It feels like this contractor is reinventing the wheel,” she told the AP, “and people are losing their lives in their experiment.”
“It should not be operational,” she added.
