Inspectors find dozens of safety violations at largest ICE detention center
U.S. Customs and Border Protection headquarters in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kevin Carter/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — An internal inspection report by Immigration and Customs Enforcement found dozens of safety and security violations at the country’s largest migrant detention center during a recent visit.
Inspectors with ICE’s Office of Detention Oversight found 49 deficiencies at Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas, during a three-day visit.
Of those, 22 violations involved “use of force and restraints,” and included failing to document incidents, failing to provide medical exams after physical altercations, and failing to record incidents on video.
The report, however, said that none of the 49 detainees inspectors randomly interviewed made allegations of discrimination, mistreatment, or abuse.
The federal inspection of the facility, which opened in 2025, comes amid concerns from lawmakers and immigrant advocates about the treatment of detainees being held there as part of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown.
Three people have died at the $1.2 billion facility, including a Cuban immigrant whose death was ruled a homicide by the local medical examiner. In a statement in January, the DHS said the detainee was pronounced dead after “experiencing medical distress.”
A spokesperson with the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said that ICE has recently hired a new contractor and is “always looking at ways to improve our detention facilities to ensure we are providing the best care to illegal aliens in our custody.”
“This new contractor will allow Camp East Montana to continue abiding by the highest detention standards WITH the ability to provide MORE medical care on-site,” the statement said. “This contract also allows more on-site staff and a PRECISE quality assurance surveillance plan. ICE will have even more oversight of the contractors at this facility.”
The inspection report, released this week, identified four “priority” deficiencies within the facility’s medical department, including multiple failures to properly isolate and notify leadership regarding a detainee showing symptoms of pulmonary tuberculosis.
Inspectors found that a detainee showing symptoms of TB was not isolated, posing a potential risk to others. According to the report, the facility failed to notify ICE leadership of the medical risk.
Inspectors also found that staff at the facility did not document whether they were conducting required checks to prevent self-harm and suicide among detainees. At least one of the detainees who died is presumed to have died by suicide.
“ICE will continue to ensure that all of the detainees in our custody receive the level of care, service, and medical support they need to match our high detention standards,” the DHS statement said.
(WASHINGTON) — The White House said Tuesday President Donald Trump and his advisers are discussing a range of options to acquire Greenland — adding “utilizing the U.S. military is always an option.”
“President Trump has made it well known that acquiring Greenland is a national security priority of the United States, and it’s vital to deter our adversaries in the Arctic region,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. “The President and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal, and of course, utilizing the U.S. Military is always an option at the Commander in Chief’s disposal.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
An undated photo from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein is part of a collection of images released Dec. 18, 2025, by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. (House Oversight Committee Democrats)
(WASHINGTON) — Democrats on the House Oversight Committee are seeking testimony from private investigators who removed and stored a trove of evidence from the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion before it was searched by police in 2005, according to letters reviewed by ABC News.
With the Department of Justice appearing to have never obtained the evidence — which included three desktop computers and more than two dozen phone directories — lawmakers want to interview the men about the removal of what could have been key evidence for police and prosecutors in their probe into Epstein’s sex trafficking.
“[T]he Committee requests that you make yourself available for a transcribed interview to provide insight into the contents, removal, storage, and location of the materials removed from Mr. Epstein’s Palm Beach home,” Oversight Committee ranking member Rep. Robert Garcia of California wrote in letters that were sent to the three private investigators, who were working for Epstein.
“The Committee also seeks information regarding the reason for the removal of these materials, the potential withholding of these materials from law enforcement, and any other information regarding the activities and crimes of Jeffrey Epstein and any of his co-conspirators,” Garcia wrote.
ABC News last month reported about the removal of the potential evidence, which may have shielded Epstein from legal scrutiny and contributed to how he was able to largely evade justice for more than a decade.
The Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) issued a report in 2020 that faulted Alexander Acosta — then the top federal prosecutor in Miami — for agreeing to a plea deal with Epstein on charges in Florida before securing the missing computers, including one that was believed to have video footage from Epstein’s home surveillance cameras.
“There was good reason to believe the computers contained relevant — and potentially critical — information; and it was clear Epstein did not want the contents of his computers disclosed,” the OPR report said.
In letters first obtained by ABC News, Garcia formally requested that private investigators Paul Lavery, Stephen Kiraly and William Riley appear separately for voluntary transcribed interviews. The deadline for the investigators to respond is April 9.
According to the letters, Epstein’s longtime attorney Darren Indyke — who sat for a deposition before the Oversight panel last week — told lawmakers that the evidence was likely never turned over to law enforcement.
“After Epstein’s conviction, after he served jail time, through conversations with defense counsel I became aware that there were computer hard drives in the possession of private investigators,” Indyke said in his deposition. “I just don’t know how they came into possession, but I knew of the existence of hard drives.”
Documents released earlier this year by the Department of Justice shed new light on the removal of the potential evidence. According to a 2005 memo from private investigator William Riley to one of Epstein’s criminal defense lawyers, Lavery visited Epstein’s Palm Beach home to remove “items of potential evidentiary value” less than two weeks before police raided the mansion in October 2005.
Lavery removed more than 100 pieces of potential evidence, according to an index released by the DOJ, including the three computers, 29 bound telephone directories and a listing of nearby masseuses, as well as a trove of sexually explicit materials. Among the removed materials was a photo with a handwritten message saying, “You better never forget about me” from an unknown woman who signed her name “Class of 2005.”
When the Palm Beach Police Department searched Epstein’s home two weeks later, investigators noted that multiple computers from the property “were conspicuously absent” from the home, including one linked to Epstein’s surveillance system.
While federal prosecutors attempted to recover the evidence while investigating Epstein in the late 2000s — including subpoenaing Riley for testimony — law enforcement agreed to abandon the effort when Epstein agreed to the 2008 plea deal that allowed him to avoid a lengthy jail sentence. Documents released by the Department of Justice indicate Epstein’s attorneys continued to keep tabs on the evidence to ensure the materials were not disclosed to attorneys for Epstein’s victims in civil litigation.
In 2009, Riley confirmed that he would continue to store the materials in a “safe and secure location,” though the evidence’s location in the following decade remains unclear.
“If at any time, you are unable to maintain possession of those materials or have any concern whatsoever that Mr. Epstein’s possession may be compromised in any manner, please advise me immediately such that we can take the necessary actions to protect and preserve those materials as is required in the Non-Prosecution Agreement,” an attorney for Epstein wrote in a letter memorializing the conservation about the evidence.
Billing records of the private detective agency owned by Riley and Kiraly, both former Miami police officers, show that the firm’s invoices for Epstein and his attorneys spanned several years and included recurring charges for a storage facility, according to records included in the DOJ’s release of Epstein files.
Riley and Lavery did not respond to requests for comment last month. Reached by phone, Kiraly said he would not discuss anything related to Epstein.
Garcia told ABC News “it’s incredibly troubling” that Epstein’s computers and hard drives were in possession of private investigators and may have never been seen by any law enforcement agency.
“This idea that now these private investigators have this enormous amount of information that has not been accessible to us on the committee or in Congress or the American public is pretty significant,” Garcia said. “They’re an important part of our investigation.”
House Democrats, in the letters, requested that the investigators “preserve all relevant materials” in their possession, including hard drives, storage devices, backup archived data, cloud-based storage accounts, financial records, videos, photos, audio recording and all communications.
The committee also requested any records “reflecting the transfer, custody, or handling of the above materials; and any physical items that were taken from Jeffrey Epstein’s home.”
While Garcia’s invitation is for voluntary testimony, if the men do not cooperate, the committee could vote to subpoena them, or the Republican chairman of the Committee, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, could also unilaterally compel them to testify.
“We are bringing in anyone that has any information that would be helpful to our investigation and hopefully we’ll be able to get the truth to the American people and provide some type of justice for the victims,” Comer said after a recent deposition with Epstein’s accountant Richard Kahn.
Marie Villafaña, the former assistant U.S. attorney who pushed to indict Epstein during the investigation in Florida, previously said if the evidence on the missing computers “had been what we suspected it was … [i]t would have put this case completely to bed,” according to the OPR report.
Acosta said he had “no recollection” of the efforts to obtain the computers, and objected to the report’s conclusion that he should have given greater consideration to pursuing the evidence before entering the deal with Epstein, the report said.
Jeffrey Epstein is seen on the images released on December 19, 2025 by the US Department of State. (US Justice Department/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(CHICAGO) — The Department of Justice said in a new court filing Monday night that there are more than 2 million documents “potentially responsive” to the Epstein Files Transparency Act that are presently in various phases of review.
Federal prosecutors said that “in the next few weeks ahead” about 400 department attorneys in Washington, D.C., New York and Florida “will dedicate all or a substantial portion of their workday to the Department’s efforts to comply with the Act.”
The effort will tap DOJ lawyers from the Criminal and National Security Divisions and will also include assistance from more than 100 FBI analysts experienced with handling sensitive victim materials, according to the letter from Jay Clayton, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, to U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer.
“Many of the attorneys dedicated to this review from the Department have experience in victim-privacy related matters, which is necessary given the nature of the materials and the types of documents that require careful redaction,” Clayton wrote. “While the commitment of Department personnel to this effort has been substantial in breadth and impressive in effort, substantial work remains to be done.”
The letter does not indicate a total page count for the millions of records under review and provides no specific time frame for when the DOJ expects to complete the work or when to expect its next public disclosure. The deadline set by Congress for the release of all the Epstein-related investigative files was Dec. 19.
Thus far, the DOJ says it has posted to its “DOJ Epstein Library” 12,285 documents totaling about 125,000 pages.
The filing from the DOJ follows ABC News’ reporting last week that the DOJ had recently identified over 5 million records that may be subject to disclosure under the law.
In a footnote to the court filing Monday, the DOJ indicates that it expects that a “meaningful portion” of about 1 million newly identified FBI records may be duplicative of others already collected by the DOJ for review, but those documents “nonetheless still need to undergo a process of processing and deduplication.”
Clayton’s Monday letter also notes that the DOJ has received “dozens” of inquiries from alleged victims and their representatives requesting that materials already posted to the DOJ’s website be further redacted to protect the privacy interests of the victims.
The DOJ will be modifying its procedures going forward “to better ensure the protection of victim identifying information,” according to the court filing.
“The Department remains committed to providing as much protection to the privacy interests of victims and their relatives as is practicable,” the letter states.
