The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has contracted with two struggling companies to build and operate a massive new $1 billion detention center in Texas. One company, Acquisition Logistics LLC, that was fired by the Department of Homeland Security last month, was never registered to operate in Texas, and the new company, Amentum Services Inc., has a history of health, safety, and other violations of federal law, according to New Public Citizen Report Titled Billion Dollar Collapse: The Anatomy and Failure of the ICE Detention Center Contract, authored by scholar Douglas Pasternak.
The Trump administration for the first time awarded a $1.3 billion contract to build and operate Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas at Ft. Bliss to Acquisition Logistics LLC, a company with no prior experience building or operating a detention facility. The contract has a financial cap of $2.7 billion. The 5,000-person facility is being built on the same site that housed Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War II, and its construction has been condemned by Japanese-American groups and others. One of the subcontractor’s employees died on site just two days after the contract was first awarded. Since then, three detainees have died, with the local coroner ruling one of these deaths a homicide. Eight months after the contract was first awarded in July 2025, due to a series of these and other fatal problems, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) replaced Acquisition Logistics with Amentum Services, Inc.
Amentum Services received a no-bid sole-source contract last month to provide management of the facility, including housing, transportation and medical care. However, Amentum and its subsidiaries have been cited and fined for 112 regulatory violations over the years, including fraud, employment discrimination and dozens of health and safety violations over the past six years.
The Trump administration is awarding large contracts to companies with little prior experience, as well as to established companies with questionable track records, raising alarm bells about how taxpayer money is being spent and how these detainees are being treated, said Public Citizenship researcher Douglas Pasternak, who wrote the report.
“This is not just about corporate negligence and government mismanagement, it is about human lives, literally,” Pasternak said. “And every American should be deeply concerned.” “The Trump administration is doling out billions of dollars in taxpayer money on contracts that resulted in four deaths in a six-month period. And things are unlikely to get better. The new contractor has a history of health and safety violations, including a 2023 incident that involved workers at CIA headquarters in Virginia possibly being exposed to toxic chemicals, and the 2024 death of a worker at Fort Belvoir. None of that bodes well for the 5,000 people. Immigrant detainees the Trump administration hopes to They are housed at the Camp East Montana Detention Center in Texas.
Upcoming ICE Detention Protests: On Saturday, April 25, communities across the country will come together to… Communities Not Cages – National Day of Action – A coordinated, nationwide mobilization against the Trump administration’s reckless expansion of ICE warehouse detention and its assault on the due process rights of immigrants and all Americans. Public Citizen is a key partner in Disappeared in America, a campaign organized by the Not Above the Law coalition.
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