For the second time in two years, Texas is experiencing a significant measles outbreak. But unlike last year’s outbreak, there’s little information about the...
Three federal detention centers in Texas have seen measles cases this year. The largest outbreak is at the West Texas Detention Facility in Hudspeth County. The next largest occurred at Camp East Montana, pictured here, outside of El Paso.
For the second time in two years, Texas is experiencing a significant measles outbreak. But unlike last year’s outbreak in the South Plains, there’s little information available about the new surge because it erupted at a privately operated federal detention center — and company officials aren’t talking. What has blunted the effect of this outbreak is that the West Texas Detention Facility is in Hudspeth County. That expansive county is even more sparsely populated than Gaines County, where last year’s outbreak was centered. Still, there are already dozens of cases at the detention center in Sierra Blanca, the seat of Hudspeth County. Related infections have turned up in El Paso, the closest big city, according tothis newspaper described in a previous editorial: Why did federal officials report many more cases of measles in Texas than the Department of State Health Services did? At the time, the state tallied 18 infections while the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 93. News stories showed there had been scattered cases at Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in Dilley and at Camp East Montana near El Paso. But dozens of cases were unaccounted for, and neither ICE nor the CDC explained them.Now we know: Most of those mystery cases were affiliated with a third federal facility, the one in Sierra Blanca, which is operated by Louisiana-based LaSalle Corrections for the U.S. Marshals Service. It’s a serious outbreak. As of Wednesday, Hudspeth County had 130 confirmed cases of measles in a county of only 3,500 residents. That’s more cases than the whole state had between 2015 and 2024. Yet The Tribune reported that facility managers declined to provide El Paso public health officials with information about detainees’ vaccination history or their close contacts at the facility, which hampered health workers’ ability to track the disease.in Hutchins it had wanted to use as a detention center. A measles outbreak there would have spread almost immediately to the surrounding population, and hundreds of local residents could have caught the virus before the facility’s operators alerted Dallas County public health workers or medical facilities. “You really want to make sure they are aware it’s in the community and they get vaccinated,” said Dr. Philip Huang, director of Dallas County Health and Human Services. “You want clinicians to have it on their radar.” The job of the state’s top political leaders is to protect Texans’ interests. That means pressing federal officials to quickly and consistently provide the information public health workers need to keep Texans safe.Dallas Morning News editorials are written by the paper's Editorial Board and serve as the voice and view of the paper. The board considers a broad range of topics and is overseen by the Editorial Page Editor.
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