By Julienne McClure, Luisa Clausen and René Kladzyk / Project On Government Oversight
In March, Immigration and Customs Enforcement fired the contractor running Camp East Montana, the nation’s largest ICE detention facility, amid deaths, a measles outbreak and allegations of substandard medical care. Quietly, the facility kept using the same medical provider at the facility.
Loyal Source Government Services, a company holding nearly $2 billion in lucrative federal contracts despite a troubled track record of medical neglect, has continued to be the subcontractor providing medical care at Camp East Montana, the troubled ICE detention facility located on Fort Bliss property in far East El Paso County. That’s according to two different congressional offices based on information provided to them by ICE.
“Putting Loyal Source in Camp East Montana is a train wreck,” said Charles Tiefer, a federal government contracting expert and law professor at the University of Baltimore. “You are combining a contractor with a very dubious record and a facility that is in shambles.”
ICE fired the prime contractor at Camp East Montana on March 11, following reports of inhumane conditions and medical neglect. When the new contracted company was announced, an ICE spokesperson praised the company’s “higher standards of medical care” in a statement to the El Paso Times. But the agency did not clarify that the actual medical provider at the facility remained unchanged.
ICE declined to confirm that Loyal Source continues to work as the medical provider at Camp East Montana in an emailed statement to the Project On Government Oversight. But a spokesperson for U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, said ICE told their office that Loyal Source continues to be the medical provider at Camp East Montana as of May 4. Likewise, the office of U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez, D-New Mexico, who visited the facility in April, said that during their visit, Loyal Source was still the facility’s medical provider.
Both Loyal Source and the facility’s current prime contractor, Amentum Services Inc., have not responded to multiple requests for comment.
Escobar said she does “not understand the logic” of retaining Loyal Source as the medical provider at Camp East Montana. During an interview, Escobar described a recent visit to the facility where she met a man with a broken forearm who had solely been treated with aspirin for weeks.
“His arm had not been set. I could literally see the break,” she said. “I think it makes obvious just how unacceptable the medical care is inside that facility.”
In the nine months since Camp East Montana opened, attorneys visiting the facility have sounded the alarm about lapses in medical care: missed medications, ignored medical forms and untreated illnesses mentioned in complaint after complaint.
Meanwhile, Loyal Source is in the midst of its most lucrative year by far, with contract awards growing by over 1,000% from $155 million in 2022 to $1.8 billion in fiscal year 2026. The vast majority of the company’s new awards have come from the Department of Veterans Affairs for medical screening and medical disability examinations.
Loyal Source’s troubled contracting history
For years, Loyal Source has been scrutinized for poor medical care in Department of Homeland Security facilities, mainly at short-term immigrant processing centers run by Customs and Border Protection. As recently as July 2024, Loyal Source provided medical care at over 80 CBP facilities across the nation.
Critical attention has even come from within DHS. In 2022, ICE didn’t award a nearly $3 billion contract to Loyal Source because the company’s quality control plan lacked a “significant effort at detection of problems,” according to government documents.
In 2023, the Senate Judiciary Committee launched an investigation into Loyal Source’s job performance following the death of an 8-year-old girl, Anadith Reyes Álvarez, at a Texas Border Patrol station.
The Senate investigation report found that children were being held in CBP custody for too long in facilities that faced chronic understaffing, inadequate medical records systems, insufficient guidance for treating vulnerable children and a lack of oversight of Loyal Source.
The 226-page report, published in 2025, identified systemic breakdowns in how Loyal Source staff managed patient records, contributing to poor care. Whistleblowers cited in the report said that the company’s providers frequently ignored CBP’s electronic medical records system, relying instead on paper records. The investigation found staff would cite “ignorance of the system, understaffing and overwhelming numbers of noncitizens to process through it,” as reasons not to use the system.
According to the report, Reyes Álvarez’s medical history was documented in the electronic medical records upon her arrival. In the days leading to her death, Loyal Source medical staff responsible for her treatment in the hours before her death failed to access her electronic file or review her history.
A CBP spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the agency cannot speak to all incidents that occurred during the Biden administration, but claimed that, under Trump, CBP is delivering lawful medical care.
“Allegations mischaracterizing CBP’s treatment of individuals in custody are irresponsible and undermine the integrity of lawful immigration enforcement,” the spokesperson told POGO. “CBP abides by strict legal and humanitarian standards, with processing facilities’ continuous internal and external monitoring to ensure proper medical care, nutrition, welfare checks and humane conditions.”
The spokesperson told POGO that detainees have medical care available “from intake through their time in custody.”
Past investigations of the company did not stop ICE contractors from hiring and retaining Loyal Source as a medical provider at Camp East Montana.
“It is pretty incredible to me that there is not a recognition by the new contractor that a significant change had to be made,” Escobar said.
‘Horrific’ medical care at Camp East Montana
Lawmakers such as Escobar have consistently raised alarms about medical care at Camp East Montana, calling for its closure and even attributing the cause of one of the deaths at the facility to medical neglect.
ICE’s own detention oversight office found the facility violated at least 49 standards for immigration detention during a February 2026 inspection. The internal report found multiple deficiencies with medical care, including that staff did not properly isolate people with tuberculosis symptoms, and did not properly record medical unit check-ins used to prevent suicide.
Even congressional efforts to exercise oversight have been obstructed by the facility. When U.S. Rep. Kelly Morrison, D-Minnesota, visited Camp East Montana in March, she was denied access to constituents held at the facility despite repeated attempts.
“What I saw here was horrific,” said Morrison, who is a physician, in a video posted about her experience. “I’ve heard about a pregnant woman in her third trimester who was not getting adequate prenatal care.”
Medical neglect in ICE detention can have life or death implications. At least three people detained at the camp have died in recent months.
Francisco Gaspar-Andres, a 48-year-old Guatemalan man, is one of them. His death “appears to partially be the result of poor medical care by staff at the facility,” according to a February letter sent by 24 lawmakers calling for the facility to be shut down.
Gaspar-Andres died Dec. 3, 2025, having sought medical attention from the facility staff since Sept. 23 for a range of symptoms, according to ICE’s account. The letter from lawmakers said he was only transferred to a nearby hospital “once his condition had severely deteriorated.”
ICE disputes this characterization. “From the moment they were notified of his health crisis, ICE medical staff ensured he had constant, high-quality care,” ICE said in a news release about his death.
Advocacy groups have decried conditions at the facility. A coalition of nonprofit groups led by the American Civil Liberties Union interviewed 45 people held at the facility, and 16 of them recalled their experiences in sworn declarations under penalty of perjury.
The testimonies use pseudonyms for fear of retaliation from ICE. In the statements, detained immigrants recount physical abuse by officers, attempts to coerce them into self deportation through threats and physical violence, insufficient food, denial of access to legal counsel and medical neglect.
DHS leadership has strongly contradicted dire characterizations of medical care at Camp East Montana. “This is the best healthcare that many aliens have received in their entire lives,” said former DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin in a September statement following media coverage of conditions at the facility.
Medical neglect at Camp East Montana
A man from Cuba identified in the sworn declarations by the pseudonym “Isaac” was detained at Camp East Montana in August. Since approximately 2021, he has suffered from high blood pressure, according to his ACLU statement. Following a stroke sometime around 2023, a blood pressure medication, potentially Lisinopril, became part of his morning routine.
But that routine was disrupted after Isaac arrived at Camp East Montana and did not receive his medication for over a month. At that time, Isaac recounted that he had started to experience blurry vision and recurrent headaches.
A month later, he got his high blood pressure pills, but they were not administered at the proper time, undermining their effectiveness. A doctor at the facility prescribed Isaac a second medicine, a diuretic, weeks before he signed the ACLU’s declaration. By the time he gave his declaration, he reported that he had yet to receive this medication.
In November, Isaac had the flu and was moved to a medical unit at Camp East Montana. He said many of the people held in this unit went for days without receiving their medication while enduring dirty conditions.
“This place seems designed to wear you out,” Isaac described in the letter.
The conditions Isaac described are not isolated complaints. Charlotte Weiss, an attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project’s Beyond Borders program, has been visiting Camp East Montana every week since the fall to speak with individuals about the conditions and abuse they experience.
Weiss said each visit revealed similar concerns: ignored medical requests, delayed care and a facility where basic hygiene standards were neglected.
Some of the consequences became visible in February, when a measles outbreak swept through the facility, with at least 14 confirmed cases and 112 people placed in isolation, leading to a two-week lockdown. Weiss said she wasn’t surprised.
“This was the foreseeable and tragic outcome for a facility that has neglected and abdicated its responsibility to those in its custody for months,” Weiss said of the medical care provided by Loyal Source at the facility.
‘Disproportionately high profit margins’ amid lawsuits
Since 2017, Loyal Source has been sued 22 times for a litany of issues including alleged labor law violations, wage theft, employment discrimination, and mistreatment of people in detention, according to legal documents obtained from PACER, the online federal court document system.
Judges ruled in the Loyal Source’s favor in two cases. In six cases, Loyal Source paid more than $5.2 million dollars in out-of-court settlements. Seven lawsuits remain ongoing while 13 were dismissed.
Loyal Source has also faced an investigation by the Department of Labor for wage theft and has been the focus of two protected whistleblower disclosures alleging understaffing and underpayment.
In its 2018 investigation, the Labor Department discovered Loyal Source had illegally deducted $10 per paycheck from each employee and fined the company, using more than half a million in recouped dollars to reimburse over 4,000 workers.
In November 2023, a whistleblower disclosure brought by a CBP contracting officer and the Government Accountability Project revealed that Loyal Source paid its medical staff below the market rate, resulting in low staff retention and understaffed facilities. Meanwhile, Loyal Source raked in a “disproportionately high” profit margin, according to the disclosure.
In April 2025, a caregiver for detained children working at a CBP facility in California sued the contractor running the facility, as well as Loyal Source, the medical provider pursuant to the False Claims Act.
During her time employed there, from 2023 to 2024, she said she saw detained people going without “access to necessary medications and proper medical attention, resulting in untreated illnesses and suffering.”
In the lawsuit, she said she believes this lack of care was a “deliberate effort to reduce expenses while (Loyal Source) continued to bill the Government for full services.”
On March 30, the judge dismissed Loyal Source from the case per the plaintiff and defendant’s request.
Loyal Source did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this investigation.
Despite all this, Loyal Source has continued to earn lucrative federal awards from multiple agencies, including the Department of Veterans Affairs (which has awarded 97% of their contracts) and DHS. And they continue to subcontract at facilities such as Camp East Montana.
“Multiple whistleblowers, both federal employees and employees of Loyal Source, raised serious concerns,” Andrea Meza, an attorney with the Government Accountability Project involved with the disclosures, told POGO. “That the company’s contracting profile has since expanded speaks volumes to the sincerity of DHS’ commitment to the safety of those in custody.”
CBP indicated it does not intend to change course. In response to POGO’s request for comment, CBP reiterated its support for Loyal Source, saying, “CBP will continue working with contractors, including (Loyal Source), to deliver comprehensive medical support and adjust resources as operational demands shift.”
The fundamental problem, according to Escobar, is that immigration contractors and subcontractors see profound financial opportunities under President Donald Trump’s administration.
“It’s one thing to be awarded a contract and to be given an opportunity,” she said. “But if a contractor repeatedly demonstrates failure, and failure that is so egregious that there have been multiple deaths at these facilities, that should inspire a very deep dive from the administration and a renewed look at what’s going on.”
The post Troubled ICE medical provider remains at Camp East Montana despite outcry appeared first on El Paso Matters.
Read: Read More