EL PASO, Texas (AP) — A large immigration detention camp in Texas has been closed to visitors and attorneys due to a measles outbreak, a lawmaker said Tuesday.
There are 14 active measles cases at the detention center on the Fort Bliss Army base and 112 people are being isolated, said U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, an El Paso Democrat whose district includes the facility, known as Camp East Montana. It will remain closed to visitors and attorneys until March 19 or March 20.
“While on one hand, it is a good thing that the measles outbreak is being taken seriously, on the other hand, I am alarmed that a preventable crisis has created conditions where detainees can only access their lawyers virtually,” Escobar said in a statement.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The camp opened last year after the Trump administration awarded a contract worth up to $1.3 billion to Acquisition Logistics LLC, a Virginia contractor that had previously not operated an ICE facility. Detainees have described a camp where an average of about 3,000 people per day live in loud and unsanitary quarters, diseases spread easily and sleep is a luxury.
Measles, an easily preventable disease that was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, ripped through Texas communities last year, in part because health departments were starved of the funding needed to run vaccine programs. West Texas was hit especially hard.
