The Trump administration is rushing to open the largest immigration detention center in U.S. history at Fort Bliss, Texas — a sprawling tent city that could hold up to 5,000 people at once. This isn’t just another facility. It’s a massive desert camp built to hold immigrants for months on end in soft-sided tents, far from public view, and with a troubling history.

In 2021, whistleblowers described dangerous, unsanitary, and mismanaged conditions when children were housed at Fort Bliss. Now the same site is being scaled up for adults, with stays that could stretch half a year or longer. Immigration detention is supposed to be non-punitive, but isolating thousands in a remote tent city under harsh desert conditions is the opposite of humane.

The problems started before a single detainee arrived. The $1.2 billion construction contract went to a little-known company with no track record for a project of this size. There have been two federal investigations into possible improper bidding. One worker has already died in a workplace accident during the rush to finish construction.

Tent facilities like this are not only harder to secure — requiring more guards and higher costs — but they’ve also been linked to worse living conditions than traditional detention centers. In the middle of the desert, everything from running water to medical care requires expensive, temporary fixes. And history shows that when corners are cut, people suffer.

We cannot allow Fort Bliss to become a hidden mass incarceration site. The United States should be investing in proven, humane alternatives to detention — not building the biggest camp in history to lock up more people for longer.

We call on the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense to immediately halt the opening of the Fort Bliss detention facility, cancel the contract, and commit to humane, community-based solutions that uphold our nation’s values.

Sign now to demand that Fort Bliss never opens its gates to this inhumane mass detention.