Fort Bliss has been a World War II US Army base located on the edge of the Chihuahuan Desert in Texas. Now, its military strength will be tested again after President Donald Trump opened the US$ 1.2 billion tent facility to hold as many as 5,000 migrants, making it the largest immigration detention site in the United States.
Critics of the change of purpose argue that its new role as a center for immigration detention revives a history characterized by confinement and exclusion.
The base already houses about 90,000 soldiers and family members, but the new compound, sealed behind military walls, is sparking alarm among advocates and local officials who warn of both humanitarian risks and troubling echoes from the past.
El Paso County commissioners passed a resolution this summer demanding transparency and accountability from the federal government.
They cited concerns about extreme desert conditions, where temperatures often rise above 100 degrees, and sandstorms sweep the open terrain.
The military setting, they say, isolates detainees from legal support and family contact, raising fears of neglect and abuse.
For critics, the choice of Fort Bliss is not merely logistical. It is historical. The base has been repeatedly used to hold civilians in times of crisis, often under conditions later seen as harsh or discriminatory.
During World War II, Fort Bliss was one of several Texas military installations used to intern people of Japanese, German, and Italian descent.
Families were uprooted from homes and confined under guard, part of a wartime policy that has since been widely condemned as unjust.
Two decades earlier, during the Mexican Revolution, the base became a temporary holding site for thousands of Mexican refugees.
Many were confined in military tents and subjected to chemical delousing procedures, some of the same toxic agents adapted for Nazi gas chambers.
In modern memory, the base has also figured prominently in the nation’s immigration struggles.
During President Donald Trump’s first term, Fort Bliss was used to house unaccompanied children separated from their families at the southern border.
Fort Bliss is not the only military site tapped for immigration detention. President Trump administration has signaled plans to expand detention facilities to additional bases across the country, supported by billions of dollars in new federal funding for immigration enforcement.