ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
We're about to get a rare look inside one of the facilities where the Trump administration is housing immigrants awaiting deportation. At Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, a site called Camp East Montana could eventually hold as many as 5,000 people.
VERONICA ESCOBAR: It is not an actual building that's been constructed out of the ground, but it is, like, a tent city of sorts.
SHAPIRO: Congresswoman Veronica Escobar is a Democrat representing that part of Texas. She told us detainees started arriving August 1, and when she asked to visit, she was told it was still a construction site and not yet operational.
ESCOBAR: So that in and of itself was deeply alarming to me - the fact that there's an active construction site that is not operational by ICE's standard, and yet they are holding human beings in custody there. And they are not allowing members of Congress to go and see what's happening.
SHAPIRO: Ultimately, she was allowed to visit twice, and what she saw made her deeply concerned - understaffing, immigrants who didn't have access to family or lawyers. And she said every detainee she met had been in the U.S. for decades.
ESCOBAR: And it was just heartbreaking story after heartbreaking story. They also told me that the food that they had eaten and were being provided was bad. That was confirmed by an employee on site and that they were looking for a new vendor. They also told me that the water they were being given to drink was bad - tasted bad, smelled bad. Was - the food and the water were making them sick.
SHAPIRO: According to The Washington Post, ICE's own inspectors confirmed many of these problems. Reporter Doug MacMillan obtained a copy of a report that found 60 violations of federal standards for immigrant detention. The problems range from failure to treat medical conditions to safety violations. Doug MacMillan, welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
DOUG MACMILLAN: Thanks for having me.
SHAPIRO: Help us understand what this report is and why it was created.
MACMILLAN: Yeah. So to build and run these detention centers, they rely on private companies. And for this project - it was actually a contract awarded by the U.S. military - awarded this contract to a group of contractors. They are building this site, and they agree in their contract to meet all of ICE's standards around the living conditions. And this includes the quality of the food, recreation time that people get, measures around security. There's many different things that they have to fulfill as part of their contract. So ICE is now going in, sending inspectors in from its own local detention oversight unit and trying to make sure that they are fulfilling the terms of their contract.
SHAPIRO: We heard about a few of the specific violations at this facility. What stood out to you among the dozens in this report?
MACMILLAN: Yeah. One of the early concerns at the site that was substantiated by what the inspectors found in this report was that the people there who were sent to live there, were held virtually incommunicado from the outside. You know, one of the key things that - to understand about ICE detention is that it's not meant to be punitive. It's...
SHAPIRO: Right. It's not prison.
MACMILLAN: Yeah. It's simply meant to be a place where you hold people while they're awaiting their court proceedings or deportation proceedings. So one of the parts of that is that these people have a right to speak to a legal representative, to meet with their family members. And what we understand and what was substantiated in this ICE inspection report is that they were not being given that right. There were no telephones in the facility, and the detainees were instructed to use tablet computers to make calls outside. And a number of them reported that their PIN numbers they were given to access the tablet computers weren't working, so their line of communication outside was not available.
There are a number of legal representatives we spoke to who were trying to get inside to meet with the detainees to help them understand their cases. They were for several weeks barred from entering. And then what we also learned was that these people were given no access to ICE deportation officers. In other words, they had no way of learning about their cases or asking questions about their cases.
SHAPIRO: You spoke to a detainee who told you about this. His name is Ricardo Quintana Chavez, and you've sent us some of the voice memos he shared with you. He was at the tent camp for 24 days before voluntarily deporting himself to Peru last week, and he described the lack of access to these deportation officers.
RICARDO QUINTANA CHAVEZ: (Through interpreter) You never have the chance to speak with an ICE agent one on one about your case. Never, never, never. When one shows up every three or four days or once a week, he answers questions, but in a generic way. If you focus the questions on one person, he says, look, I don't know your case. I don't know what to tell you. So it's basically, I don't know your case, I don't know your case, I don't know your case.
SHAPIRO: Tell us more about what you learned from him.
MACMILLAN: Yeah. So he was there for more than three weeks. He said that he lived in a small cell with a number of other men and that he was only fed junk food all day. They were giving him snacks like potato chips in lieu of meals. He also said that he had very little access to the outdoor recreation area. Apparently, because the site is still under construction, they have only completed one of the four recreation areas that they're supposed to be giving to detainees there. And so that one space has to be shared among hundreds and hundreds - over 1,000 detainees who are being held there.
SHAPIRO: Who's responsible for fixing these problems? Is it the private contractor? Is it the federal government or what?
MACMILLAN: It's a combination. Ultimately, the private contractor agreed to these conditions, so it's ultimately on them, but it's - I mean, there's also a role that ICE plays in overseeing the site and making sure that the contractor is complying with it.
SHAPIRO: The Department of Homeland Security called your report false and misleading. In a statement, Assistant Secretary Trish (ph) McLaughlin said, quote, "all detainees are provided with proper meals, medical treatment and have opportunities to communicate with lawyers and their family members." How do you respond to that?
MACMILLAN: Yeah. Well, we stand by our reporting, which is primarily based on ICE's own inspection documents. And DHS' statement to us, they didn't really grapple with the fact that our findings were primarily based on ICE's own statements.
SHAPIRO: These facilities were built in a hurry. We heard that it was still under construction when the first detainees started to arrive. Do you think these problems are growing pains that will eventually get sorted out? Like, are they a bug or are they a feature?
MACMILLAN: So this is the first of many large, makeshift-type holding facilities that the Trump administration plans to build. They call them soft-sided structures because they're not physical, hard buildings. They're just...
SHAPIRO: They're tents.
MACMILLAN: ...Building large...
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
MACMILLAN: ...Tents, and there's kind of a temporary nature of them. And there's also a question about whether it's appropriate to hold people in these kind of temporary structures for long periods of time. I think what we're seeing here is some serious kind of questions about this plan to hold people for two, three, four-plus weeks in these facilities and whether the contractors that are choosing to do this and put these together in a short period of time are able to actually meet ICE's own standards.
SHAPIRO: You've said that these facilities are not meant to be punitive. We heard that the Department of Homeland Security rejects your characterizations. Do you think they're committed to solving these problems that their own inspectors have identified?
MACMILLAN: Yeah, I want to know that. I want to know what happens next. I think what happens at Fort Bliss could be a telling sign of what happens at the dozens of other ICE facilities around the country that are holding larger and larger numbers of people.
SHAPIRO: Doug MacMillan is a reporter with The Washington Post. Thank you.
MACMILLAN: Thanks, Ari.
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