The 87-year-old MV Barima capsized in Atlantic waters on June 18 after it departed the capital, Georgetown, en route to Port Kaituma, an Indigenous community near Venezuela.

Authorities have said they believe 179 passengers were aboard, but divers so far have found only 73 bodies, with another 76 people rescued. International teams are still trying to recover the vessel so experts can inspect it.

President Irfaan Ali said in a state address July 26 that the investigative team has been given widespread powers and is expected to operate independently.

Belize’s former attorney general, Phillip Godfrey Smith, was appointed chairman of the five-person team tasked with the investigation, including whether professional negligence is to blame. Other members include an attorney, a naval architect and maritime experts from Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago.

Local authorities have so far arrested three people, including the rescued captain, who was accused of testing positive for marijuana, along with another crew member.

Ali said the team will be asked to scrutinize the “passenger management including embarkation, manifest preparation, the possible overcrowding of the vessel, the storage of cargo, the availability and use of life-saving equipment and adherence to passenger safety requirements.”

Dozens of people rescued after clinging to debris for hours have claimed that the ferry was overloaded with passengers and cargo, including vehicles and large pallets. They also asserted that the MV Barima was taking in water but that crews had dismissed this as “normal.”

Ali said his administration wants the commission to determine whether there were “any acts of negligence, misconduct, dereliction of duty and other failures by any individual, entity or institution contributed to or caused the disaster, including neglect of its condition, maintenance history, sea tides, functioning navigation and communication equipment and other operational factors.”

Ali said authorities hope the commission will recommend institutional and operational reforms as well as any other measures necessary to strengthen maritime safety, “improve emergency preparedness and response and reduce the likelihood of similar tragedies occurring in the future.” (AP)

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The agreement, which the Brazilian government said is expected to be published in the coming weeks, has been under negotiation since 2024. It will establish a framework for sharing information and coordinating protection efforts, the ministry said.

The announcement comes after a group of Ashaninka Indigenous leaders began meetings with federal officials in Brasilia, Brazil’s capital, seeking urgent protection for their territory.

Earlier this month, five armed men carrying machine guns invaded their land, threatened families and searched for their main leaders. The Ashaninka territory spans the Brazil-Peru border in the western Amazon.

The ministry said that safeguarding Indigenous territories and the communities living there requires a “coordinated response to shared threats, such as invasions, illegal activities and pressure on traditional lands.”

Peru’s Ministry of Culture could not immediately be reached for comment.

Gangs and drug traffickers are increasingly encroaching on Ashaninka land and using the rivers in the Amazon and adjacent land for drug routes. The recent invasion is part of a broad transformation of the Amazon border as criminal routes expand, through what experts call the Solimoes River route.

Indigenous territories are key to this route. Experts say protecting Indigenous land is one of the most effective ways to curb deforestation in the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest and a key regulator of global climate.

But the very forests these communities help protect leave them vulnerable: Dense tree cover in remote, hard-to-reach areas offers attractive hiding sites for drug traffickers.

The ministry also said the federal police opened an investigation into the attacks on Ashaninka territory. On July 20, they launched an operation in the region alongside state authorities.

“The operation aims to prevent and combat incursions into Indigenous territories, criminal organizations, drug trafficking, environmental crimes and other cross-border offenses,” it said.

In a separate statement, the Brazilian Army said it had reinforced its presence along the border by deploying about 30 troops to the area. Various Indigenous groups have previously criticized these deployments for being temporary while the threats remain permanent.

The Army said it continues to patrol the region and that preliminary information from Indigenous leaders and government agencies suggests the armed men were Peruvians who entered the Indigenous territory from across the border. (AP)

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Fire managers try to anticipate nature’s next move, placing thousands of firefighters, hundreds of engines, batteries of bulldozers, and fleets of helicopters and air tankers where they’ll make the biggest difference.

This year, they’re dealing with persistent drought made worse by record-low snowpack levels and consecutive days of hot, dry and windy weather. Hundreds of homes have burned, three firefighters were killed battling flames in Colorado, and a helicopter helping with another Colorado fire crashed into a reservoir, killing the pilot.

National preparedness has yet to reach its highest level, but resources are getting stretched as new fires pop up daily.

“The U.S. Wildland Fire Service is prioritizing pre-positioning of crews, engines and aircraft in areas with the highest likelihood of wildfire activity,” the agency said in an email to The Associated Press when asked about available resources. “This allows for quicker initial attack when new wildfires ignite, which is often the most effective way to keep fires small.”

U.S. preparedness level ratchets up

The National Interagency Fire Center, a collection of federal and state agencies that support on-the-ground wildfire fighting efforts, sets the preparedness level at 1 to 5 based on fire activity, resource demands, weather and conditions on the ground that can be fuel for a fire. By late June, surging wildfire activity prompted coordinators to move the needle to level 4 and begin funneling more crews to the hottest spots.

The national fire center has confirmed more than 2,100 fires since the beginning of July. The explosion of fire activity across the West led to the assignment of more highly skilled and experienced incident management teams. Some have traveled from Alaska and California to help with fires in the Great Basin region.

As of July 14, 17 such teams were overseeing nearly 17,000 people spread across more than a dozen states. It’s typical to see preparedness increase in July and August, but fire managers are hopeful they can juggle resources to avoid maxing out.

Over the past decade, fire managers have reached the top preparedness tier an average of 25 days annually, with the longest stretch happening in 2021, according to federal statistics. The earliest the designation ever occurred was June 21, 2002.

The most recent outlook shows above normal wildfire potential in July from the Four Corners region—where New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah meet—North to Oregon, Idaho and Washington. It’s not expected to simmer down until September.

Christopher Dunn, an assistant professor of wildfire risk science at Oregon State University, said those outlooks help determine how and where to mobilize resources. Those resources shift as the fire season moves from region to region.

In a busy year, states must weigh whether to free up resources to help elsewhere or pressure federal officials to keep crews in reserve in case of increased risk. That’s what Dunn describes as hoarding resources. (AP)

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The 84-page report issued jointly July 15 by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union also says men and women held at Camp East Montana, located at the U.S. Army’s Fort Bliss in El Paso, recounted being denied necessary medical care, forced to live in filthy conditions and fed inedible meals. Detainees also said they were prevented from contacting their lawyers or family members.

Of the 71 detainees contacted over a five-month period, 64—about 90% of those interviewed— said they had either personally been assaulted by the staff or had seen others physically abused, according to the report.

“ICE’s Camp East Montana is a human rights disaster,” said Angélica César, a fellow at Human Rights Watch and the ACLU who was a lead researcher for the report. “The U.S. government should shut it down, conduct independent investigations into all abuses and deaths in custody, and put an end to mass deportations and mandatory immigration detention.”

The Department of Homeland Security issued a statement saying reports of inhumane conditions at its desert tent camp were “categorically false,” that no detainees are being beaten or abused, and that “ICE takes seriously the health and safety of all those detained in our custody.”

The new accounts of violence and substandard living conditions inside Camp East Montana are consistent with earlier reports by The Associated Press and others. At least three detainees held at the facility since it opened in August have died, including a 55-year-old Cuban migrant who was handcuffed and stopped breathing earlier this year after being held down by guards.

A local medical examiner later ruled that death a homicide and a federal report issued last month said evidence in the case was “missing or destroyed.” That report by the Government Accountability Office found mismanagement by the Department of Homeland Security had created unsafe conditions that contributed to detainee deaths and suffering even as millions of wasted tax dollars enriched contractors.

In March, ICE replaced Acquisition Logistics, LLC, the prime contractor that had been awarded a deal last year worth up to $1.3 billion to build and manage the camp, which was originally intended to hold up to 5,000 people. The Virginia company had no prior experience running an ICE detention facility, had never won a federal contract worth more than $16 million and lacked a functioning website.

The change came as an internal ICE review documented 49 deficiencies, which it defines as violations of detention standards or policies, in areas including the use of force and restraints, security and medical care.

Despite the change in contractors, interviews conducted by Human Rights Watch and the ACLU as recently as last month found serious problems at the camp have persisted.

Detainees recounted degrading and inhumane living conditions that included bathrooms covered in feces, flooded housing units and no access to soap or other basic hygiene supplies, according to the report. They also reported being held indoors for weeks without meaningful access to recreation, sunlight or fresh air.

People also described receiving spoiled food and inconsistent meal schedules, with delays of up to 12 hours between meals. The report recounts detainees saying that guards beat detainees in response to hunger strikes, requests for medical attention and complaints regarding detention conditions.

Several people said that guards imposed collective punishment, striking or assaulting multiple people after accusing one detainee of violating rules, according to the report.

Researchers found that staff pressured and coerced those held there into abandoning immigration claims and accepting removal to third countries if they could not be sent back to their own country. The detainees said they were threatened with violence, criminal prosecution, and indefinite detention if they refused deportation.

In some cases, the report concluded, the circumstances of ICE detention could amount to enforced disappearances, a potential violation of international human rights law.

Human Rights Watch and the ACLU called on the Trump administration to close Camp East Montana and to allow independent investigations into deaths in custody, excessive force, medical neglect and enforced disappearances.

“The abuses documented at Fort Bliss are the predictable outcome of the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda, its brutal expansion of immigration detention, and the erosion of federal oversight mechanisms,” said César, the lead researcher. “People at Camp East Montana are human beings who deserve to be treated with dignity and protected from harm.” (AP)

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“Without any doubt, if I had been alone I wouldn’t have made it here, 12 years later,” she said, at a recent event at her son’s old school marking the anniversary of his death. “We need one another to cry together, to smile together and to fight together.”

Oliveira and other Brazilian mothers turn to activism to ensure that their sons are remembered as more than a statistic. Now, they are demanding a nationwide policy to support relatives of victims of state violence and are seeking public funding to finance their activities.

The nonprofit Crossfire Institute said 460 people died during police operations in Rio last year, the highest number since 2016 and a 52% increase from the previous year. Much like the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, a human rights organization created by women whose children were kidnapped by the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983, Oliveira and her group draw attention to the pain generated by police killings and seek judicial accountability—sometimes successfully.

Last year, they traveled to the capital Brasilia and met with the judiciary, legislative and executive branches to present their project, developed with the support of Raave, a network of organizations supporting people affected by police killings in Rio.

“Raave is negotiating with the federal government to implement a pilot project … developed by the mothers, so that we can provide care and guarantee the rights of this population,” said Guilherme Pimental, a coordinator for Raave.

Turning grief into struggle

As in other Latin American countries, including Peru and Colombia, crime is a key issue for voters in Brazil’s elections in October. Supporters and allies of presidential hopeful Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, argue that police must be given full support in their fight against heavily armed gangs in favelas, or impoverished sprawling urban communities.

But grieving mothers and nonprofits contend that Brazil’s police too often use excessive force, sometimes ending in death. Oliveira’s son Johnatha was shot in the back as he passed through a street in Manguinhos favela in Rio after visiting his grandmother, his mother said. He later died of his injuries.

“Police officers allege that they shot him to disperse a crowd” that was protesting, said Oliveira, who wants the law enforcement official who fired the shot convicted of intentional homicide. In 2024, a jury convicted the official of manslaughter without intent to kill. Prosecutors successfully appealed, but a new court date for a second trial hasn’t been set.

Like Oliveira, Monica Cunha also transformed her pain into activism. After her 20-year-old son was killed by police in 2006, she became a councilwoman and this month will launch her pre-candidacy to run for state lawmaker in the upcoming October elections.

“I fight for memory, truth, justice, reparations and guarantees of non-repetition—not only for myself, but so that no other family has to endure this pain,” Cunha said in an Instagram post on the 18th anniversary of her son’s death. “The racism that kills our children and loved ones is not an isolated problem, and it must be confronted through state policies.  I will keep going, turning grief into struggle.”

Brazilian police have killed more than 6,000 people every year since 2018, according to the Brazilian Forum on Public Safety, a prominent nonprofit. The largest number of victims are age 18 to 24, while 82% of victims of lethal police violence are Black, the nonprofit said in its 2025 annual publication on violence in Brazil.

‘We need solutions’

Nadia dos Santos’ sons Cleyton and Cleyverson were both killed by police: the former in 2015 when he was 18 and the latter when he was 17 in 2022. Police also killed the son of her sister, Glaucia dos Santos, Fabricio, in 2014 when he was 17.  A memorial honoring and depicting the three boys covers the front wall of the family’s home in Rio’s Chapadao complex of favelas.

The sisters founded support groups and began the long work of investigating the circumstances of each boy’s death, seeking accountability through the courts.

In 2023, the police officers involved in the death of Fabricio were sentenced to nine years in prison, a decision that was celebrated by other mothers and gave them hope, Glaucia dos Santos said.

“We want others to stay alive, so we have to stay upright” despite the immense toll of the grief, said Glaucia dos Santos.  Her sister Nadia said the mothers need a nationwide public policy on restitution that she went to Brasilia to demand.

“The state should have the obligation to give us mothers who lose our sons because of the state’s violence reparations. … We fight, we work, but we become ill. We need solutions,” she said.

Oliveira suggested restitution could take the form of placing victims’ names in public places and naming facilities after them, such as schools, hospitals and daycare centers.

“There are other forms of reparation as well, such as building other public policies of non-repetition that would help prevent new cases. … Many things need to be done, repaired, so that this barbarity does not continue,” she said. (AP)

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Already, parts of the U.S., especially Phoenix and central Texas, and much of the Southwest were experiencing temperatures around 100 F on June 28, while the weather service warned of severe wildfire conditions developing across much of the West as new fires popped up across the region.

On June 28, well over 130 million Americans across southern and Great Plains states were under moderate to severe heat risk conditions, according to weather service maps, with that area forecast to expand and temperatures to intensify as the week drags on.

Forecasters say several days of high temperatures—some above 100 degrees F—will settle in across the lower Great Lakes, the Mid-Atlantic and the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys. Some record highs were forecast to be set in areas from the lower Great Lakes to the Mid-Atlantic and New England later in the week, said weather service meteorologist Bryan Putnam.

A number of big cities could see their highest temperatures of the year so far as they host World Cup matches and celebrations for America’s 250th anniversary.

Feeling the heat will be the East Coast cities of New York, Philadelphia, Washington and Baltimore, and Midwestern and Great Lakes cities including Chicago, Indianapolis, St. Louis and Detroit. Southern cities including Dallas, Little Rock, Arkansas, and Memphis, Tennessee, will also see high temperatures.

High heat will last into next weekend across the Great Plains, the Southeast and the Mid-Atlantic, the weather service said.

Temperatures will reach well into the 90s and low 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the weather service said. High humidity will lead to heat indexes of 100 to 110 degrees F, and as high as 115 F. “That’s heat that’s impactful to anyone,” Putnam said.

“It’s not just older adults or younger children or people who are spending a ton of time outdoors, maybe straining themselves a little more than normal. This is heat that really could impact everyone, especially with people outdoors going into the holiday weekend.”

The heat index, which factors in humidity and is included on many weather forecasts, provides a sense of how hot it really feels—and what’s dangerous for prolonged exposure or strenuous activity.

AccuWeather meteorologist Tyler Roys said temperatures will be significantly above normal. For instance, in Washington, highs around July Fourth average around 89 degrees F, while Indianapolis averages around 85 degrees F. But this week (the week of June 28), both cities will be hotter by 10 or 11 degrees F, Roys said.

The high-pressure system—an area of dry, sinking air—creating the heat will act like a “rock” that will force storms to go around it and limit rainfall across the East, Roys said. That’s sometimes called a “heat dome.”

Nightly lows in the 70s F or even high 80s won’t provide much relief, meteorologists said.

For those who don’t have air conditioning, especially in Eastern Seaboard cities like New York where lows may not dip below 80 F, it’s going to be miserable to sleep, Roys said.

Roys also said this is a prime time for heat-related illnesses because people’s bodies aren’t able to recover and cool off.

During extreme temperatures, limit outdoor activity, stay hydrated and ensure access to air-conditioning and other cooling areas, the weather service said.

The weather service said it expected extremely dry and windy conditions that could promote rapid wildfire spread across the Great Basin and the Southwest on June 28.

In hot, windy conditions near the Colorado-Utah border, three firefighters working for the U.S. Wildland Fire Service and U.S. Forest Service were killed, and two others sustained burn injuries, when they were overcome by flames from fast-moving wildfires.

Wildfire activity has intensified across the Western U.S. as hot, dry and windy weather fueled flames in Utah, Colorado, Arizona and elsewhere. (AP)

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Police Scotland said that a 36-year-old man was arrested late June 19 after officers received multiple reports of attacks in the west and north of the city.

The force said that five men—two of them age 22, and others ages 24, 27 and 39—sustained a range of injuries and three needed hospital treatment. None of the injuries is considered life-threatening.

The charity Muslim Engagement and Development said that several of those injured are Muslim. The Scottish Association of Mosques said that two of the injured men were attacked after attending prayers at their local mosque.

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that the suspect “appears to be motivated by anti-Muslim hatred.”

“I will not tolerate this—he will face the full force of the law,” Starmer said in a post on X.

Video posted on social media appeared to show a shirtless man carrying a long weapon roaming a street and battering a restaurant door in the Scottish capital. Another video seemed to show the same man on the ground shouting about “protecting the country” while being held by a police officer.

U.K. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said that she was “horrified” by news of the attack in Edinburgh. “There is no place for hatred and violence against Muslims,” she said. “I know it is not who we are as a country.”

The Muslim Council of Britain said in a statement that the Muslim community is “rightly nervous and worried.” It said that the violence was “a direct consequence of political rhetoric that demonizes entire communities.”

Police Scotland Assistant Chief Constable Catriona Paton said that it was a “shocking” incident. She said that officers “are being supported by Counter Terrorism Policing.

“I want to send a clear message of support to all our communities that there is no place for racism or faith-based hate in a Scotland, which is at its best when we stand together,” she said. (AP)

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Punishing temperatures extended to the United Kingdom and Spain, where weather agencies issued red alerts—like France—about the risks of extreme heat for tens of millions of people.

The record of 85.6 F for France’s national thermal indicator—an average of temperatures measured at 30 weather station—was only the latest in a series of never-before-registered highs heaped on Europe’s largest country. The conditions were likely to persist at least until the weekend.

“Further record-breaking temperatures are expected, including some that could surpass all previous records, regardless of the time of year,” the Meteo France weather service said.

France’s previous hottest days were recorded during heat waves of August 2003 and July 2019, with an average temperature of 84.9 F.

Temperature records also tumbled at individual weather stations and on consecutive days in some towns as daytime highs climbed well above 104 F, Météo France said.

France has recorded 40 fatalities from drowning in the past week as people seek relief in rivers and other bodies of water, despite authorities’ warnings about unsupervised swimming. Most of the drownings involved young people, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said.

Météo France said the heat wave has reached what it described as a “plateau of severity,” with unrelenting heat, day and night. A growing number of regions will tip into the red again June 24 as the heat spreads across more than half of the country, including the northernmost tip of France, the weather service said. (AP)

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Hundreds of Indigenous people have testified. They’ve sobbed, cursed and laughed in spite of it all.  Many told stories about their time in boarding schools that they’ve kept inside for decades, finally able to begin recovering from childhood trauma.

An oral history project led by the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition is wrapping up in Tulsa, Oklahoma  on June 19.  To date, the nonprofit’s historians have collected video testimony from more than 360 Indigenous survivors in 19 states—stories set to be preserved in the Library of Congress for years to come.

Iona Mad Plume, who is Blackfeet and grew up on her tribe’s reservation in Montana, said she “can’t emphasize enough” how healing her experience was. She testified in front of a video camera last month in Billings about her time in the Pierre Indian School in South Dakota, where she was sent at age 14.

Mad Plume, now 74, said since her interview, she’s been more grounded and has been able to let go of some of the haunting memories: a dusty blue Greyhound bus driving her away from her parents’ red pickup truck. School staff beating her with a wooden dowel as she cowered on a bunk bed in her dorm room. Eating cornmeal or cereal littered with weevil bugs.

“I got a lot out of that, pretty much a lot of closure,” she said. “It was after almost a lifetime of carrying around questions and different things in my mind—so I don’t have to carry that around anymore.”

Another boarding school survivor who contributed to the project in Michigan in 2024 recounted a similar experience. Gene Bozicic, of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, attended the Catholic-run Holy Childhood School of Jesus in Harbor Springs, Michigan, beginning at age 11.

“As we further went along, I started to feel more confident in what I could do and what I have accomplished, almost like more pride to be Native,” Bozicic, now 81, said about her video interview.  “I hate  to see it coming to an end, because they have given me my backbone back.”

Survivors endured systemic abuse

The oral history project, which began in March 2024, is a collaboration between the Minnesota-based National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition and the U.S. Department of the Interior.

The intent is to document and share with the public the systemic abuse endured by boarding school survivors under the government’s attempts at forced assimilation—policies that began in the 1800s and lasted for over a century.

Two years earlier, former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland—a Laguna Pueblo member and a descendant of boarding school survivors—led the historic Road to Healing listening tour with Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland, a citizen of the Bay Mills Indian Community.

Haaland’s Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative also included in-depth reports on the schools’ multigenerational impacts. Nearly 1,000 Native children were buried at 65 different school sites, the federal government reported. Atrocities occurring within school walls ranged from physical and sexual abuse to failed attempts at cultural genocide, the report found.

In the more than two years since the boarding school coalition’s oral history work began, the process of collecting these in-person testimonies in 19 states evolved, said Lacey Kinnart, the coalition’s oral history program co-director.

Initially, the “quiet room” where survivors decompress with a fellow elder after their interview was optional. But staff soon changed that policy so entering the room was automatic, and added a second “quiet room.” They also began matching survivors with a licensed clinical therapist who specializes in boarding school trauma and a licensed social worker.

“Our elders don’t want to be a burden,” said Kinnart, a citizen of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. “But they really do need that extra support.”

Kinnart said staff also noticed survivors feeling nervous around the Indigenous photographer. That shyness showed in the photos. So they built in an extra half-hour into the schedule so each survivor could get to know the person who took their portraits.

Stories affect generations

The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and the Department of the Interior are still assessing how to present the video interviews to the world. Survivors, however, will retain full ownership of their interviews and they alone decide whether their stories are made public.

The videos will be housed in a permanent oral history collection at the Library of Congress, and the project’s end date is June 2027.

The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition will continue other oral history projects independently.  Staff  said their next project will likely be more costly —potentially as much as $13 million—compared to the $6.2 million they received from Interior and the Mellon Foundation for the initial oral history project. And while the upcoming venture would take longer, it would be even more inclusive.

“We’re just scratching the surface with these stories,” said the coalition’s Oral History Program Co-director Charlee Brissette, a citizen of the Sault Ste. Marie of Chippewa Indians.  “We want to get a more robust picture of the boarding school experience because it does have that intergenerational effect.”

Indigenous people excluded from this first iteration of the oral history project may get another opportunity in the coming years.  It’s an effort welcomed by survivors and descendants alike.

“I’d be interested in doing that, because the whole story needs to be taught,” said Desiray Emerton, 56, a Seminole woman and a descendant of two generations of boarding school survivors.

Her relatives attended Goodland Academy and Chilocco Indian School in Oklahoma. She said she’s seen the generational impacts: Because of her boarding school experiences, Emerton’s mother struggled to be affectionate toward her as a child. And her grandmother died long before the oral history project’s existence.

“I know time’s running out for those who did go through that personally,” Emerton said, “but I always tell my kids I’m walking on the prayers of our ancestors, and I’m running out of time.”

This story is published through the Global Indigenous Reporting Network at The Associated Press.

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The Government Accountability Office report documents serious problems at Camp East Montana, a sprawling tent facility at Fort Bliss in El Paso where three detainees have died in little more than six months. Evidence in one of those deaths, of a 55-year-old Cuban migrant who died in January after being held down by guards, was “missing or destroyed,” the report found.

ICE rushed to open the camp in August before construction was complete and failed to conduct required oversight to ensure detainees were held in sanitary conditions and receiving adequate medical care, according to the report.

The Department of Homeland Security noted that ICE has replaced the contractor running the facility. “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,” said DHS spokesperson Lauren Bis.

The GAO’s findings echo past reporting by The Associated Press and other news outlets about dangerous conditions at Camp East Montana, which quickly became the nation’s largest immigration detention facility.

But the government report also details previously undisclosed incidents, including that a detainee escaped in October due to what ICE called the contractor’s oversight failure. In January, a security guard lost a loaded firearm inside the facility that was never recovered.

The contractor failed to administer skin tests to screen detainees for tuberculosis, relying on a questionnaire instead, the report said. The inadequate screening allowed a detainee with tuberculosis to be housed with the general population, which later suffered an outbreak.

GAO is an independent, nonpartisan agency in Congress that investigates how federal funds are spent and evaluates whether programs and policies are operating effectively. The office opened its review into Camp East Montana at the request of Democrats in the House and Senate.

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois called the report’s findings “damning.”

“We now know even more details of how dangerous and irresponsible the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign truly is,” said Durbin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, adding that “those detained are experiencing conditions that shock the conscience.”

A rush to build led to an inexperienced contractor

Facing pressure to increase its detention capacity, the Trump administration routed the contract to build Camp East Montana through the Army to speed construction after ICE twice failed to successfully award one. That resulted in selecting a small, little-known contractor, Acquisition Logistics, for the $1.3 billion deal despite it having no prior experience operating detention facilities and facing what ICE called a “significant learning curve.”

The Army—and later ICE after the camp was transferred to the agency—wasted millions of dollars paying for services it did not need because the contract did not account for fluctuations in the detainee population, the report said.

The Army blew up to $11.5 million paying for guards, medical services, transportation and meals in the weeks before the camp held detainees. The agencies wasted millions more because it was contracted to pay the cost of meals for the camp’s maximum population of 5,000, even when the number of detainees there dropped to around 1,600, the report said.

Facility didn’t initially meet detention standards

The facility did not meet ICE detention standards or the contract’s requirements in several ways when it opened, in part because it had not been inspected as required by ICE policy, the report said. The camp lacked security cameras on the perimeter and had other surveillance blind spots that raised the risk of sexual assaults or escapes.

The camp could not accommodate detainees using wheelchairs and had no showers compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, resulting in the disabled being held in medical care rooms.

The recreation area wasn’t available for several days, and after one yard was opened, it wasn’t enough space to provide required time for detainees. The law library, space to meet with attorneys and a visitation area did not open for weeks, resulting in detainees being deprived of legal resources and contact with family and friends, the report found.

The problems persisted as ICE began transporting more detainees there from across the country, the GAO found. While built to house up to 5,000 immigrants for short-term stays, its population has averaged about half of that from October until April, according to ICE’s most recent data.

Missing evidence and other problems

Detainees held at the facility didn’t receive comprehensive health assessments, which meant that those with chronic conditions received substandard care, the report said.

The contractor cleaned the dormitories weekly rather than daily as required, resulting in unsanitary conditions. Some guards offered detainees cookies if they would clean their own rooms. Acquisition Logistics didn’t reply to messages seeking comment.

The GAO report says investigations into the January death of Geraldo Lunas Campos were undermined after “evidence associated with the incident was missing or destroyed.” It did not elaborate.

Campos died after he was restrained by guards and an outside autopsy report ruled the death a homicide due to asphyxia. The contractor at the facility did not provide use-of-force and death reports to ICE as required, according to the new report.

An investigation by ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility into the death is on hold pending a criminal investigation by the FBI.

On Jan. 14, Nicaraguan detainee Victor Manuel Diaz, 36, died of suicide after staff put him in a medical holding room instead of a suicide-resistant cell and left him unattended for intervals longer than 15 minutes, the report said. Staff could not see into the room because the contractor had failed to install vision panels that had been requested months earlier, it found.

“These are huge discrepancies in their failure to prevent suicides,” said Diaz family attorney Randall Kallinen, noting that the report strengthens a potential wrongful death claim he’s considering. “They are part of an entire laundry list of problems at Camp East Montana.” (AP)

A sign marks the entrance to a series of hardened tents at the Camp East Montana immigrant detention center in the desert at a U.S. Army base on the outskirts of El Paso, Texas, Feb. 13.

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