An explosion of reported measles cases in Texas' federal detention facilities broke through to the public last month, infecting at least four El Paso residents who worked in one of the centers and potentially exposing the highly contagious disease to the wider population, according to emails obtained by The Texas Tribune through record requests.
The emails also reveal that as they grappled with infections, El Paso city officials became frustrated at times by a lack of information from federal and facility authorities, who were apparently not forthcoming with information about how many detainees were vaccinated and who came into contact with them.
"We unfortunately are not able to get the detainee vaccination status," Brandon Rohrig, the city's health deputy director, said in a March 2 email responding to a colleague's question about the percentage of detainees vaccinated in each facility. "[Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and the facilities hardly know who is in and out of their buildings, they don't share the names of some people with us, and they don't allow us to speak with detainees."
Together, these details signal how Texas' outsized role in housing federal detainees, which has escalated under the Trump administration's immigration crackdown, poses a public health risk to a state contending with worsening vaccine rates.
On Feb. 26, El Paso public health officials confirmed the city's first measles cases of the year were four adults with unknown vaccination statuses who had visited busy locations across the city including a hospital, a department store, two malls and three restaurants.
In the same news release, city officials also reported 13 measles cases in Camp East Montana, the country's largest immigration detention facility located just outside the city limits. Officials said the community cases were not tied to those in the tent camp and declined to provide further information.
Records now show that those four residents were staff at the West Texas Detention Facility (WTDF) in neighboring Hudspeth County, which holds U.S. Marshals Service detainees including immigrants who may be transferred to ICE custody after completing their sentences. Hudspeth County Judge Joanna MacKenzie said her area is rural and sparsely populated, so many of the facility's staff live in El Paso. Officials have not reported a case among residents in Hudspeth, even as measles cases have spiked in the Sierra Blanca site.
A WTDF detainee also potentially exposed measles to 18 people at Del Sol Medical Center in El Paso after being transferred there on Feb. 7, the emails said.
U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, said the Tribune's findings reaffirmed her concerns about the risk that these detention centers have on the greater community, calling them "black boxes" for her office as well as for local and state officials.
"This administration has done everything possible to prevent congressional oversight," Escobar said. "All of this doesn't just put detainees at risk. It puts El Pasoans who work inside of them at risk, and these are El Pasoans who ultimately go back into their homes, into the community."
The Department of Homeland Security has not responded to several repeated questions from the Tribune, including on how measles entered detention facilities and how many vaccine doses have been administered there.
Instead, an unnamed DHS spokesperson restated the same points the agency has been making for weeks: ICE detainees have access to "comprehensive medical care," including vaccines, and that the ICE Health Services Corps "immediately takes steps to quarantine and control further spread" when an active infection is confirmed. That official also said there were no more active cases in El Paso's Camp East Montana as of March 17, while declining to comment on cases at WTDF because it's not an ICE facility.
In its own statement, the Marshals Service said "all prisoners suspected of having a reportable infectious disease have been reported to the Texas Department of State Health Services and are being isolated in accordance with their protocols." The agency then redirected questions about the cases' timeline and vaccines to WTDF, which is operated by LaSalle Corrections. The facility is owned by Hudspeth, but the county's leader has also deferred to the Louisiana-based company, which did not respond to detailed questions for the story.
Meanwhile, a state health agency spokesperson, Lara Anton, said the four WTDF employees no longer pose a risk to the community because their incubation period has passed. She added that DSHS is not currently seeing widespread community measles transmission.
This year, DSHS has reported 147 measles cases as of March 18. Most were in federal facilities: 108 cases in WTDF, 15 cases in Camp East Montana and two cases in the South Texas Family Residential Center, the country's only ICE facility holding children and their parents, in Dilley.
It's unclear when and how the first measles cases entered these facilities, though the infections at Dilley were the first to be publicly announced. DHS said they were confirmed on Jan. 31.
In West Texas, the earliest cases documented in the records involved two WTDF detainees who developed rashes on Feb. 7. Their citizenship status is unclear, but at least one detainee was previously in Customs and Border Patrol custody, the emails indicate.
Public health experts said these detention centers — some of which are facing mounting complaints about unsafe and inhumane conditions — are ideal environments for the spread of the measles, which can cause serious complications for young children, pregnant women and immunocompromised people. Infected people are also contagious for about four days before and after the rash appears, and they can spread it to as many as 18 unvaccinated individuals.
"You got all these people in close quarters. You got high contact rates, maybe a lot of movement of people in and out. It is very difficult to verify or ensure vaccination status in these populations," said Phil Huang, vice chair of the state's public health policy committee and Dallas County's public health director. "So with it being so contagious, one case can really spread quickly in that setting."
Huang added that the cases can easily spill into the community, such as through contact with staff: "These infectious diseases don't respect any boundary."
Scott Sutterfield, a spokesperson for LaSalle, previously told the Tribune that the facility's medical staff conduct regular health screenings, provide immediate isolation and treatment for suspected cases and work closely with public health authorities.
MacKenzie, the Hudspeth County judge, also expressed confidence in the federal contractor: "Until I get a call that [measles] is in my community, I have full faith in the capability of LaSalle."
Troubles contact tracing, forecasting
To reduce the risk of measles spreading in the community, local officials were communicating with federal and facility authorities about the cases happening inside detention facilities. Emails indicate that they wanted to know information about infections inside the centers — even as they are outside of the city's jurisdiction — to provide vaccines and predict future cases in the sites.
But the city was running into roadblocks at times, records show.
For instance, after learning that a detainee who was transferred from Camp East Montana to WTDF had reportedly exposed the virus to 90 other people in the camp, the city's lead epidemiologist Vanessa Casner wrote in a Feb. 19 email clarifying to colleagues that the department did not know how many of those contacts were still at the El Paso site.
"We are not conducting contact tracing or monitoring on any of the detainees or staff of the facilities as this information has not been provided to us," Casner wrote. She added that another 150 people at WTDF were also exposed to measles, but the email doesn't make it clear by whom.
The federal and facility authorities' lack of information sharing has also created challenges for local officials in forecasting cases, as highlighted in an email exchange in late February. The email's subject was titled: "Measles Outbreak in Congregate Settings."
"As we receive more reports of positive measles cases in congregate settings such as detention facilities, we need to be ready and expect a large number of positive cases in such facilities," Hector Ocaranza, the El Paso County health authority, said in a Feb. 22 email to colleagues.
Ocaranza then recommended using a forecasting tool for measles spread in schools to estimate the number of future cases in detention centers. But Rohrig, the city's health deputy director, responded saying that the tool would likely not be effective because officials didn't know the vaccination status of detainees.
"Further, I don't believe ICE is being transparent with how many people are actually there and which ones are coming and going," Rohrig added in his Feb. 23 email. "Especially as all of this changes daily, so even if they were transparent, it is shifting a lot more than a school ever would."
El Paso city spokesperson Laura Cruz-Acosta said the city is "maintaining open communication and coordination with federal partners and will continue that collaboration."
At the state level, Anton from DSHS similarly said the agency receives "limited information" about cases among detainees in federal facilities.
The agency has not publicly declared a measles outbreak this year, even as more than 100 cases have been reported in WTDF alone. In contrast, DSHS officially announced an outbreak after confirming six cases in Gaines County early last February. A cascade of resources followed, including significant help with measles testing and contact tracing in rural communities and a webpage that included weekly case updates with hospitalizations and ages of people infected. In total, DSHS spent more than $10 million on responding to last year's historic measles outbreak, which grew to more than 760 cases and resulted in two deaths.
Anton didn't respond to the Tribune's question about why there has been no official outbreak declaration for WTDF. Though another DSHS spokesperson, Chris Van Deusen, previously told the Tribune that the "state's role inside federal facilities is very limited."
"By definition, when more than 2 measles cases occur in a community where there should be 0 cases, this is an outbreak," said Flor M. Muñoz, a spokesperson for the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases and an associate professor at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital in Houston.
"Lack of transparency and lack of understanding the urgency of the situation results in delayed care, further spread of disease, poor outbreak control, and unnecessary illness and potential death among the most vulnerable."
Unclear vaccine protection
The level of vaccination coverage in federal detention centers remains unclear, which records show can hamper public health planning.
"Would it be possible to include in this report the percentage of detainees vaccinated (per facility)?" Eric Musungayi, an El Paso city public health official, wrote in a March 3 email. "This would give us a clearer picture of outbreak control progress and help determine whether additional vaccine surge efforts are needed."
Rohrig responded the same day, saying that federal authorities and facilities have not shared much information. He added that it can also be difficult to independently verify due to the population in federal detention.
"The state was offering to help look people's status up, but the detainees are coming from all over and if they are undocumented, then their vaccine status will also be undocumented," Rohrig, the city's health deputy director, wrote.
DHS, the Marshals Service and LaSalle didn't respond to the Tribune's questions about how many vaccine doses they have used this year in their facilities.
What's clearer is that state and local officials have provided measles vaccines to the facilities. For instance, DSHS gave 570 doses to the Dilley family facility in early February, Van Deusen said. Records also show El Paso officials anticipating the arrival of 400 "outbreak doses" from the state agency later that month.
At the same time, it's also critical for communities to maintain adequate vaccination coverage, as cases inside facilities can spill out to the wider public, public health experts said.
"Vaccination is key," Muñoz said. "The most important thing we can do to help protect communities from measles is vaccination."
But kindergarten vaccination rates across the state and the country have dropped compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic. Texas' rate decreased from 97% in the 2019-20 school year to 93% in 2024-25, according to DSHS.
The state also does not track adult vaccination rates in a similar way. When the 2025 measles outbreak hit El Paso, it caused more cases among adults than children due to what public health officials say are high vaccination rates in schools. State data show that 98% of kindergartners in El Paso County were fully vaccinated against measles that school year.
This year, all of the 24 measles cases the city of El Paso reported so far have involved adults, according to its measles dashboard. All but two involved individuals with no or unknown measles vaccination history.
Meanwhile, 94% of kindergartners in Hudspeth County were fully vaccinated against measles in the 2024-25 school year. The sparsely populated county didn't report a case during last year's outbreak, and all of its cases so far this year were in the detention facility.
"We have two unprecedented things going on," said Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. "One, measles has returned to America. And second, you got this very odd situation with ICE and detention facilities, so it's created a whole new dynamic that I don't know that we have a lot of precedent for."
Stephen Simpson contributed to the story.
Disclosure: Texas Children's Hospital has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
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