Philadelphia-area Democrats are pushing for more information about the operations of Moshannon Valley Processing Center, the largest immigrant detention center in the Northeast, as its current contract has been approved for an extension.
Commissioners in Clearfield County, where the center is located, voted Tuesday to grant a six-month extension of its contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and GEO Group, the private prison company that owns and operates the facility.
Under an Intergovernmental Service Agreement, ICE pays Clearfield County. The county then contracts with and pays GEO Group to operate the facility.
Last week prior to the extension vote, U.S. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, D-Delaware County, and fellow Pennsylvania House Democrats sent a letter asking the county, ICE and GEO Group to provide financial documents regarding the current status of the contract and billing information.
"ICE is paying GEO, through the county, millions of dollars a month to detain people who, by and large, have no criminal record," Scanlon told WHYY News. "So it raises a number of questions, including about why are people who are not a threat to the community and have no criminal record, why are they being placed in a prison setting? But also, is this a proper use of taxpayer dollars?"
The facility opened in 2006 as a federal prison. It was repurposed as an ICE detention center in 2021.
Advocates say most people detained by ICE in the Greater Philadelphia region are sent to Moshannon, the largest detention center in the Northeast, with a maximum capacity of 1,876.
According to Clearfield County Commissioner Tim Winters, the number of people detained at Moshannon was 1,711 as of Tuesday.
County is an 'intermediary' between ICE and GEO Group
Dave Glass, a Democratic Clearfield County commissioner, was the lone "no" vote against extending the contract.
He said former President Joe Biden's administration approached the county in mid-2021, requesting they be an "intermediary" in a contract between ICE and GEO Group, one of the largest private prison companies in the country.
"Over the past five years, basically, GEO bills ICE. ICE pays us. We turn around and pay GEO, and we keep $200,000 a year as an administration fee," Glass told WHYY News ahead of Tuesday's meeting.
Glass said he regrets approving the contract with the other two commissioners, given what has occurred since President Donald Trump took office in January 2025.
"I deplore ICE's tactics, especially under the Trump administration," he said. "They campaigned on getting, quote unquote, the worst of the worst out, and they're ripping people out of communities with no history of criminal anything. And it just strikes me as not the right way to go about this."
"As a county, I don't want to be in business with them," he added. "I don't have the power to change immigration law, but I have the power to say whether or not our county is involved, or at least I have one vote towards that."
"I became very uncomfortable with where things are, and I've said publicly for the last year I won't support a new contract," he said.
Commissioners Winters and John Sobel voted to extend the contract, while acknowledging some concerns raised by residents during Tuesday's public comment. The vast majority of the speakers condemned ICE policies and called for the county to end its part in the detention center contract.
Winters and Sobel cited negative economic impact to the region in the form of lost tax revenue if they rejected the contract. They also urged residents to lobby their federal representatives to change immigration policy.
"We do try to intervene and see if there's something we can do to help folks there at the institution, but in the end, this is ultimately a decision that has to be made at the federal level, and that's really who you need to be making your argument to," Sobel said.
Commissioners' oversight of Moshannon is "small," Winters said, but voting no to the contract would have no impact on the detention center's operations and also result in the county "losing [their] seat at the table."
"A 'no' vote does a disservice to the taxpayers of the Clearfield County, and it also does a disservice to those that are held at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center," Winters said.
"We lose our ability to go to the facility and see what is happening, as we all have at varying points."
Sobel said that "with the folks at GEO, and particularly the director, I have not found evidence of a consistent policy or pattern of behavior of intentional abuse or improper behavior that I know is often spoken to us about."
In a statement, the advocacy group Shut Down Detention said Tuesday that "reports from people inside the facility contradict [Sobel's] findings."
The coalition of organizations and individuals opposing ICE's actions was "disappointed and furious that Clearfield County has once again chosen to be complicit in human rights abuses, to be complicit in the violation of the constitution, to choose to work with an agency that has murdered people in cold blood."
Immigrant rights groups, including Pennsylvania Immigration Coalition, have raised concerns about conditions at the facility, including medical neglect. Since the facility opened, three immigrant detainees — Frankline Okpu, Chaofeng Ge and Imam Fouad Saeed Abdulkadir — have died there.
According to a 2025 report from Harvard University researchers and Physicians for Human Rights, Moshannon put the highest number of people in solitary confinement of any of the immigrant detention centers analyzed in the study, which used ICE data from April 2024 through May 2025.
In a statement to WHYY News, an ICE spokesperson said that "it is a longstanding practice to provide comprehensive medical care from the moment an alien enters ICE custody."
"This includes medical, dental, and mental health services as available, and access to medical appointments and 24-hour emergency care. For many illegal aliens this is the best healthcare they have received their entire lives," the spokesperson wrote.
Scanlon questions use of detainee labor at Moshannon
Scanlon said she is also concerned based on what she learned during a congressional oversight visit in July, which indicated that the prison is "being run using the labor of people who may be held unconstitutionally or without due process."
During the tour, she was told that there were just two full-time janitors for the facility.
"When we asked, we were told that the folks who are being detained there are cleaning the bathrooms and their living quarters, etc.," she said. "That was portrayed as voluntary, but how voluntary is it when you're being held in a prison setting? Similarly, we were told by prison officials that they couldn't run the place without using the detainee labor for cleaning, for laundry, for food service."
An ICE spokesperson said in a statement that "GEO pays detainee workers at the congressionally mandated rate of $1/day" through the voluntary work program at Moshannon. The agency said 234 detainees are currently enrolled.
Scanlon noted an irony in the use of detainee labor in light of the Trump administration's stated explanations for its immigration policies.
"A large part of this administration's push to engage in mass deportation is a claim that folks, immigrants who are here, are taking American jobs," Scanlon said. "But here is an explicit instance where they are using immigrants to do work … in these private prison facilities, and then that means that the private prison companies reap more profit."
"We're concerned both about whether there are any kind of human rights abuses going on, and about whether taxpayer dollars are being used to line the pockets of private prison companies," she added.
GEO Group did not respond Monday to a request for comment.
Questions swirl around future of the facility
Glass said there are "rumours" that GEO Group is going to sell the facility to ICE, a scenario he said is "the worst of all worlds."
"If it's federally owned, the local tax that is paid by GEO goes away, and so that's a lot of money, not just to us, but to the school district and then the municipality," he said.
In a statement to WHYY News, an ICE spokesperson said that the agency "does not discuss potential facility acquisition or other plans prior to official action."
"The contract with Moshannon Valley Processing Center was extended for an additional 6 months and the long-term solicitation process remains ongoing," the spokesperson said.
Per reporting by Spotlight PA in August, ICE filed a request for information on "turn-key" detention centers in central Pennsylvania and three other locations throughout the country.
An ICE spokesperson told Spotlight PA in an email Aug. 10 that the agency is "working to ensure continued access to detention capacity" in places where detention contracts are due to expire, and is "evaluating options, including the potential purchase of turnkey detention facilities where appropriate, or other contracting solutions to support continuity of operations."
Scanlon said she did not know whether DHS had plans to buy the facility, but that it's a question the congressional query hopes to resolve.
Regardless of how Clearfield County is involved in the contract long term, Scanlon said she and other congressional representatives will continue to push for greater transparency concerning the center's operations and finances.
"The U.S. government is proposing to continue paying billions of dollars to these private prison companies to detain people, who many of whom have legal status in this country, who have been trying to pursue their asylum cases, etc., and only don't have status because the U.S. government has taken too long to to rule on their petitions," she said. "So there will remain an issue, but we did want to make sure that folks were aware of what's going on, how much money is being spent, and some of the abuses that appear to be occurring on the taxpayers' dollars."
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