Fort Bliss detention center to get new operator after scrutiny
Source: NBC News
March 12, 2026, 5:24 PM EDT / Updated March 12, 2026, 7:42 PM EDT
The Trump administration plans to tap a major engineering and electronic services company to run the country’s largest immigration detention center, where one detainee was killed and two others have died. The Department of Homeland Security intends to award the no-bid contract to run Camp East Montana and manage its detainees to Chantilly, Virginia-based Amentum Services Inc.
The company would replace Acquisition Logistics, a small Richmond, Virginia-based government contractor that DHS hired last July for $1.2 billion to build and operate the ICE facility at the Fort Bliss U.S. Army base in El Paso, Texas. NBC News reported this month that ICE was re-evaluating the future of Camp East Montana.
Amentum has been a subcontractor at the sprawling tented facility, which has drawn scrutiny since its construction. The facility, which housed almost 3,000 immigrants as of mid-February, was quickly erected to advance President Donald Trump’s mass deportation strategy, which requires doubling detention space nationally. Camp East Montana was intended to hold up to 5,000 immigrant detainees.
By January, three detainees had died while in custody at Camp East Montana. The Jan. 3 death of Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55, originally from Cuba, was ruled a homicide by “asphyxia due to neck and torso compression,” according to the final autopsy report. The facility also has experienced outbreaks of tuberculosis and measles.
Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/camp-east-montana-detention-new-contractor-rcna263129