Texas lawmaker on "tent city" immigration facility

The long, white tents, visible to anyone driving across east El Paso, are intended to grow into the biggest immigration holding facility in US history. Representative Veronica Escobar has been inside twice. This appears to be a giant tent city. That's all we can see from the outside, but what is it like inside? That's what it is, a giant tent city. There are hard floors. There are walls that go up probably about 3/4 of the way to the ceiling.

Escobar said she saw about 1,500 people inside during her last visit two weeks ago. The government awarded Acquisition Logistics a $1 and 1/4 billion contract to build and operate the detention center. This house in suburban Richmond, Virginia, is listed as its headquarters and has no public record of running a detention facility before this one. Acquisition Logistics did not reply to our messages. The government has built this on Army property, but it's nowhere near anything that resembles an active military base. It's in the middle of sand dunes and scrub brush and on the very edge of Fort Bliss. The Army base and El Paso have a long history with immigration. Unaccompanied children stayed there under presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama. Ricardo Samaniego is the El Paso County judge. I just would like to be a little bit more vigilant about what's going on in there. I want to see it. I want to make sure.

We requested access to the facility and asked to speak to DHS and ICE officials about conditions for detainees, but they declined to comment. One of the things I heard repeatedly from the men who I spoke to was that the food was so bad that it was making them sick.

Escobar said some of the men inside told her they were moved to El Paso from Florida's Alligator Alcatraz. Are they getting any sense of how long they will be here before they'll be moved somewhere else? None. They are told nothing. They are given no information. They don't know if they're going to be moved to another facility. They don't know if they're going to be deported. It's like a black box for them.