ICE contractor for controversial Camp East Montana is trailed by fraud allegations

An aerial shot reveals Camp East Montana within the desert exterior El Paso. Credit score: Wikimedia Commons / Metropolis of El Paso

This text was initially revealed by the Texas Observer, a nonprofit investigative information outlet and journal. Join their weekly publication, or comply with them on Fb, X, and Bluesky.

Inside a cluster of windowless tents, detainees describe shedding their sense of time as they spend weeks and even months beneath the glint of business lightbulbs.

Camp East Montana — the biggest immigrant detention facility within the nation — has shortly grow to be a logo of the second Trump administration’s aggressive strategy to immigration enforcement. Positioned on the Fort Bliss army base in El Paso, the 5,000-bed heart started receiving detainees final August. Since then, immigrant detention ranges have surged to over 65,000 people nationwide, with hundreds of individuals held in Camp East Montana in an atmosphere the place frequent beatings and extreme neglect have been documented by a number one humanitarian group.

A minimum of three individuals have died whereas detained at Camp East Montana prior to now yr, together with a 55-year-old father whose dying on Jan. 3 was dominated a murder after safety guards beat him, based on reporting by the Texas Tribune. And, in February, an inspection report discovered dozens of violations of nationwide detention requirements, together with 22 deficiencies associated to “use of power” incidents.

Weeks later, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) ended a $1.26 billion contract with Camp East Montana’s former lead contractor, Acquisition Logistics, a small, veteran-owned enterprise registered to a single-family dwelling in Virginia. As a substitute, the company tapped Amentum Companies, a publicly traded multi-billion greenback firm and a serious participant in federal contracting, which had begun as a subcontractor at Camp East Montana earlier than assuming administration of the ability in April.

In late July, a federal contract discover confirmed ICE determined to increase Amentum’s contract, probably inserting the contractor at Camp East Montana by way of September 2027, with out the company having taken bids from different firms and regardless of allegations of fraud and wage theft which have adopted Amentum over its time as a authorities contractor. The extension for the subsequent 12 months is price over $776 million. Amentum has confronted quite a few lawsuits from labor unions and former workers, and it’s actively combating a whistleblower in courtroom over allegations that it inflated the price of companies it supplied to an Afghan refugee program in 2021 with a purpose to make the next revenue off a priceless federal contract.

The company’s extension additionally comes on the heels of an impartial audit in June by the federal Authorities Accountability Workplace (GAO), which discovered that the online of contractors working the ability spent as much as about $19 million on unused companies over a 7-month interval, together with funds for meals earlier than the primary detainees arrived.

The contract to handle Camp East Montana attracts from an unprecedented $45 billion funding bundle from Congress which was authorised final yr. Within the rush to increase immigrant incarceration nationwide, legal professionals and civil rights teams say the Division of Homeland Safety (DHS) has created an atmosphere susceptible to opportunism.

The division expanded operations at a dramatic scale with out together with among the circumstances usually required in prior contracts, corresponding to clear oversight mechanisms and monetary penalties for contract violations, based on Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former ICE official with information of DHS contracts underneath prior administrations.

Below previous administrations, tighter budgets compelled DHS to prioritize the place funds had been allotted. However, with an inflow of billions of {dollars} earmarked particularly for immigration enforcement, “cash is now not an object,” Trickler-McNulty mentioned.

She additionally pointed to the latest dismantling of two inner DHS places of work that had been established to examine civil rights violations, which she mentioned has restricted the variety of “exterior individuals going to the ability and taking an impartial look.”

In response to Nayna Gupta, an immigration legal professional and the coverage director of the American Immigration Council, Congress is basically writing “clean checks to businesses” with few accountability or oversight mechanisms to judge spending — making a context the place “there’s extra money accessible than ever earlier than” to go to personal contractors.

“If personal contractors wish to whittle down on medical companies in a facility, wish to shortchange sanitation in a facility with a purpose to pocket extra of the cash that got here to them within the contract, there are only a few of us on the federal stage in Congress actually watching how they transfer as a result of there have been by no means any significant necessities for these contracts within the first place,” Gupta mentioned.

When ICE awarded the unique Camp East Montana contract to Acquisition Logistics in July 2025, the contract was written with out a High quality Assurance Surveillance Plan (QASP), which permits the federal government to place financial sanctions for any violations of the contract. ICE and Military officers informed the GAO, which recognized the shortage of oversight, a QASP was not included within the contract due to the “expedited time frames for opening the ability,” the GAO report mentioned.

Because the 2010s, Amentum — together with its company predecessors and quite a few subsidiaries — has confronted quite a few lawsuits from labor unions and former workers. The contractor is at present combating a whistleblower in courtroom over allegations that it inflated the price of companies it supplied to an Afghan refugee program in 2021 with a purpose to make the next revenue off a priceless federal contract.

The lawsuit was introduced in opposition to Amentum in 2023 underneath the False Claims Act, alleging that Amentum and affiliated subcontractors used a mechanism referred to as “contract stacking” to artificially inflate the prices related to companies they supplied for a federal Afghan refugee program at a army base in New Jersey.

“Contract stacking is without doubt one of the unlucky ways in which authorities contractors pump up what the federal government pays,” mentioned Charles Tiefer, who served on the federal Fee on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In an interview, Tiefer mentioned authorities contractors typically use an opaque chain of subcontracts, hiring contractors performing varied companies on the identical authorities venture. That apply can allow firms to misrepresent the prices they report upward to authorities officers for reimbursement. (Earlier this yr, a federal choose dominated that Amentum will stay a defendant because the lawsuit proceeds, although claims in opposition to different subcontractors had been dismissed.)

In 2025, DynCorp, by then an Amentum subsidiary, paid $21 million to the federal authorities to settle a separate False Claims Act lawsuit over allegations of inflating prices related to coaching Iraqi law enforcement officials previous to being acquired by Amentum.

“I don’t suppose Amentum cleaned up the DynCorp act,” Tiefer mentioned. “The truth that they acquired DynCorp confirmed that they agreed that they needed to take as many authorities contracts as doable, and make as a lot cash off these contracts. That was the DynCorp approach, and that was the Amentum approach.”

HVAC techniques cool housing models inside Camp East Montana. Credit score: WIkimedia Commons / Authorities Accountability Workplace

From the start, Amentum was closely concerned in working Camp East Montana.

Authorities data present that Acquisition Logistics entered right into a $200 million subcontract with Amentum on July 16, 2025 — two days earlier than signing its contract to run Camp Montana with the Division of Protection, which initially arrange the contract earlier than it was transferred in October of that yr to DHS. When an impartial contractor suffered a coronary heart assault early within the facility’s development course of, an Amentum consultant — not one from Acquisition Logistics—was current throughout an investigation performed by the Occupational and Security and Well being Administration, based on data obtained by the Texas Observer.

Investigators from the GAO discovered facility contractors spent as much as $11.5 million in funds for facility companies throughout a two-week interval in early August earlier than the primary detainees arrived. Between August 16 and September 30, investigators recognized a minimum of $423,000 in wasted meal companies and a further $7.1 million which contractors supposedly spent on pointless meals companies from that October to March 2026.

In the meantime, a number of present and former detainees have mentioned they skilled drastic weight reduction as a result of poor or insufficient meals inside the ability. One was held at Camp East Montana in the course of the facility’s first 50 days and informed the Washington Publish that “he was fed cookies, candies and potato chips in lieu of meals.”

His detention at Camp East Montana overlapped with the time interval through which the GAO report discovered the funds for unused meals.

A category motion lawsuit filed in Could by the American Civil Liberties Union and different authorized advocacy organizations accommodates harrowing accounts from former and present detainees of the circumstances inside the ability. A lot of their descriptions level to a sample of cost-cutting practices which detainees have mentioned quantity to circumstances which might be “in some respects much more punitive than jail,” despite the fact that immigrant detention is civil quite than legal.

A plaintiff within the lawsuit described a three-week interval through which janitorial workers supplied by one of many facility’s subcontractors failed to wash a sewage break, forcing detainees to make use of their very own clothes to wash human feces from consuming areas.

“We’re circumstances which might be violating people’ constitutional rights to obtain ample healthcare, to obtain meals that’s adequate and that doesn’t trigger them to grow to be ailing,” mentioned Charlotte Weiss, an immigration legal professional primarily based in El Paso who recurrently visits purchasers at Camp East Montana.

Amentum was awarded the contract to handle the detention heart with out competitors in March. 4 months later, ICE provided to increase the corporate’s no-bid contract, claiming the variety of detainees and “the proprietary nature of its infrastructure” meant solely Amentum was match to handle the ability — although the corporate is much less skilled in detention administration than some personal jail firms, which additionally handle ICE amenities.

“Amentum has been a detailed associate with ICE in managing Camp East Montana, and was finest suited to take over because the prime authorities contractor for this facility,”a DHS spokesperson mentioned in a press release to the Observer.

The DHS spokesperson said additional that the “new contractor will permit Camp East Montana to proceed abiding by the best detention requirements WITH the flexibility to supply MORE medical care on-site. This contract additionally permits extra on-site workers and a PRECISE high quality assurance surveillance plan. ICE may have much more oversight of the contractors at this facility. Removed from closing, Camp East Montana is upgrading.”

Acquisition Logistics declined to remark, and Amentum didn’t reply to requests from the Observer for an interview or statements. Throughout a latest earnings convention name, John Heller, Amentum’s CEO, knowledgeable traders that “sturdy working efficiency enabled higher-than-anticipated profitability” and recognized contracts associated to homeland safety as an space of core progress.

In response to Weiss, complaints about dwelling circumstances and infrastructure points have persevered at Camp East Montana after Amentum took over the ability. “We’ve got not seen any change that has occurred … in reality, it looks as if some features have been getting worse,” Weiss mentioned.

As Amentum stands to revenue for months to return from its giant authorities deal, detainees stay confined to windowless tents within the desert, inhaling mud whereas American taxpayers pay billions to supervise their confinement.