Fort Bliss

Fort Bliss was documented in Human Rights Watch's 22 July World Cup review as the largest immigration detention facility in the United States, holding people detained by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) during a period the organisation linked to at least 54 custody deaths before the tournament kicked off and two more since . HRW's review, written by its Director of Global Initiatives Minky Worden, documented conditions there that it described as including beatings, medical neglect and conditions of confinement that may amount to enforced disappearance.

Fort Bliss is a US Army installation on the Texas-New Mexico border near El Paso, long used by the military for training and logistics. Its conversion to large-scale immigration detention places a military site at the centre of a civilian custody and deportation system, distinct from the purpose-built detention centres HRW has scrutinised elsewhere.

The facility's role in HRW's review connects it to a wider fight over accountability during the World Cup. HRW's stated remedy runs through FIFA rather than the US government, on the precedent of the 2022 Qatar tournament, when FIFA's own advisers recommended compensating migrant workers, a fund FIFA never established. Conditions at Fort Bliss became the sharpest evidence in that argument, cited as the facility housing the toll HRW put at the centre of its findings.