Court filing alleges ‘physical abuse by guards’, ‘filthy living conditions’ and disease outbreaks at Camp East Montana

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Attorneys and experts are raising the alarm that immigrants at Camp East Montana, the sprawling desert detention camp on the Fort Bliss military base in west Texas, face a risk of serious injury or death because of ongoing, extreme health and safety hazards there, according to a fresh court filing, the Guardian can reveal.

The allegedly dangerous conditions persist at the tent jail, the largest immigration detention facility in the US, despite regular reports from inside and outside the federal government that it has violated dozens of official standards since it opened last year.

In first suit over conditions at Texas’s Camp East Montana, plaintiffs allege ‘dangerous and abusive’ environment with ‘abhorrent’ medical care

The first lawsuit relating to the largest immigration detention facility in the US was filed early on Saturday against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), accusing the agency of “dire” conditions that severely violate the human and constitutional rights of those locked up at the camp in Texas.

A clutch of legal organizations is suing via a class action complaint, listing four detainees as plaintiffs for themselves and on behalf of all those currently held as civil detainees at Camp East Montana or who will be held there in the future.

“abhorrent medical and mental health care”;

“inappropriate use of force”;

“indiscriminate use of solitary confinement”;

“terrible, rotten, spoiled and inadequate” food;

“outbreaks of disease”;

“unsanitary living conditions”;

“sexual harassment by guards”.