A pair of lawyers were aghast on Wednesday as they discussed living conditions in the largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Texas during a new podcast episode.
Lisa Landau and Emerson Argueta from the Feerick Center for Social Justice at Fordham Law School discussed a recent tour of the Camp East Montana detention facility in El Paso, Texas, on a new episode of the "Legal AF" podcast with Ray Brescia. They described the conditions as "startling" and "abysmal" after interviewing 40 people at the facility.
"One of the most striking things is that these folks who have been really funneled down to Texas from across the country where they've been scooped up by ICE while they're parking their cars after they've finished work, while they're in their garden in the back of their homes," Landau said. "These are people who didn't have criminal records. These are people who've been working in jobs that are needed in our communities, and they're part of our communities."
Argueta added that he saw several people living in "abysmal" conditions.
"The most common complaint that we heard from the folks we interviewed was the lack of enough food and the poor quality of food," he said. "We also heard about delays or even no access to medical care, even when detainees were reporting symptoms like fevers, toothaches, or even following operations to their gallbladders, which requires a special diet."
"We heard that there are abysmal ratios of bathrooms to detainees that barely meet the national detention standards," he continued. "The hygiene, the cleanliness of those facilities, are not up to standard. But worse still, we heard stories of prison guards instigating physical fights among and against detainees."