Kristi Noem’s flagship immigration jail lost a loaded gun, left diabetics and HIV patients untreated, and saw evidence in a detainee’s death vanish, a federal watchdog has found.
Camp East Montana, the tented mega-jail that opened on the U.S. Army’s Fort Bliss base outside El Paso, Texas, in August 2025, is the largest ICE detention facility ever built. It can hold 5,000 people. The $1.3 billion site has been dogged by disaster almost from day one, including a fatal construction accident and three detainee deaths within its first six weeks.
The Government Accountability Office laid bare the chaos in a report published Tuesday, finding “serious performance and oversight challenges” at the camp run by the Department of Homeland Security under the leadership of Noem, who was fired by President Donald Trump in March this year. The facility opened without perimeter security cameras, outdoor recreation space, or room for detainees to meet lawyers and family, the GAO said.
ICE never inspected the site before locking people inside, breaching its own rules.
Then things got worse. In January 2026, a contracted security guard “lost their loaded firearm at the facility,” the report found. Despite repeated searches, the gun was still missing as of March.
A noncitizen with tuberculosis was housed among the general population in November after a contractor swapped required TB tests for symptom questionnaires. Detainees with chronic illnesses went without care. “None of the detained noncitizens with diabetes or HIV had treatment plans in place,” the GAO found.
The deadliest detail concerns a detainee whose death was first called a “presumed suicide” before the local coroner ruled it a homicide. The detainee, 55-year-old Cuban national Geraldo Lunas Campos, died on Jan. 3 after, witnesses said, guards restrained him. The El Paso County medical examiner ruled his death a homicide caused by asphyxia.
The FBI and the inspector general are now investigating. A contractor failed to hand ICE the required use-of-force and death reports, and “evidence associated with the incident was missing or destroyed,” the report said.
ICE terminated the contractor, Acquisition Logistics LLC—a firm with no prior experience running an immigration jail, whose 77-year-old CEO appeared to operate it from his home—in April 2026.
The watchdog also blasted the eye-watering waste. The contract requires ICE to pay for 5,000 meals per day regardless of headcount, even though the camp held roughly 1,600 people at the end of February. The Army even paid full freight for two weeks in August 2025 when nobody was detained there at all.
The GAO made four recommendations. DHS and the Defense Department concurred with all of them.
The Daily Beast has contacted DHS and ICE for comment.
