Listen to 911 Calls From Inside an Immigration Detention Center: “We Just Need to Take Him to the Hospital”

ProPublica has obtained more than 160 emergency call recordings from Camp East Montana, an immigration detention center on the Fort Bliss Army base in El Paso, revealing repeated failures to respond to detainees' medical and mental health crises. In one call, a nurse reported a detainee in agonizing pain after swallowing a foreign object; in another, from November, staff said they had no oxygen to give a woman with COVID-19 whose oxygen levels were dropping. Three men died at the facility within a six-week span between December twenty twenty-five and January twenty twenty-six, and a medical examiner ruled one of those deaths a homicide following an altercation with guards. A DHS spokesperson told ProPublica the facility provides comprehensive medical and mental health services and did not address the specific incidents in the calls. ICE plans to keep the facility running at least through September thirtieth, twenty twenty-seven.

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