Pennsylvania advocates call for shutdown of Moshannon after ICE detainee’s death

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State and local immigrant justice advocates condemned conditions at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center where a detainee died this week.

Activists called on Clearfield County commissioners to end the contract between the county, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and private corporation GEO Group Inc., which operates Moshannon.

“This most recent death serves as a reminder of what we know. Moshannon should not exist and we want it closed now,” Erika Guadalupe Núñez, executive director of Juntos, a Philadelphia-based immigrant rights organization, said. “The power is in the hands of the county commissioners to end this contract and free our local community from the harms of this local detention center.”

According to ICE, Chaofeng Ge, a 32-year-old Chinese citizen, was pronounced dead by the Clearfield County coroner Tuesday morning after he was found hanging by the neck and unresponsive in the shower by staff members. ICE said the cause of death is under investigation.

The Lower Paxton Township Police Department arrested Ge in January and charged him with criminal use of a communication facility, unlawful use of a computer and access device fraud.  He was released to ICE on a detainer after pleading guilty to some of the charges in July.

At the time of his death, Ge had been in ICE custody for five days and was awaiting a hearing before the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review.

At a press conference Thursday morning, immigrant advocates said Ge’s death is not the first time a detainee has died or has been injured at the detention center. In 2023, Frankline Okpu, a Cameroonian citizen, died while detained at Moshannon, and in August 2024, three detainees were stabbed and taken to the hospital.

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 the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, as of June 23, an average of 1,340 people are being held at the facility each day.

“Detention as a system is cruel and unnecessary and is an extension of the private industrial complex,” Núñez said. “It’s a system built to profit off of human suffering, and it doesn’t keep our community safe and it tears them apart. Since its opening in 2021, the Moshannon Valley Detention has stood as a symbol of unnecessary cruelty, operated by the GEO Group, a private prison corporation with a long and well documented history of abuse.”

GEO Group referred WHYY News’ request for comment to ICE. In its statement about Ge’s death, ICE said that it is “committed to ensuring that all those in its custody reside in safe, secure, and humane environments. Comprehensive medical care is provided from the moment individuals arrive and throughout the entirety of their stay.”

John Sobel, vice chairman of the Clearfield County commissioners, said he was “saddened” to hear of Ge’s death, but said the appropriate authorities are investigating.

“Their initial findings seem to be that the individual harmed himself, he was not harmed by somebody else or didn’t pass as a result of an accident, or something like that, either,” Sobel said. “In other words, there didn’t seem to be anything connected with it that indicates to us that there was something, you know, some violence or something like that, that we should be immediately concerned about …  I do believe the matter is being handled as responsibly as it can by the appropriate authorities here in the county.”

Alexandria Iwanenko, an Erie-based immigration attorney with the Amicangelo & Theisen law firm, said one of her clients who was detained at Erie County Prison and then sent to Moshannon reported that officials did not allow him to contact his attorney, refused to give him water and tied his hands and feet when they gave him food.

“There’s human rights violations concerns, obviously, people not having access to food and water,” she said. “There’s due process and legal access concerns, not being able to speak with clients when they are asking to speak to their attorney and then being deported without ever seeing a deportation order or any type of expedited removal or any process that existed before he was returned to his home country.”

A 2024 report by Temple University law students and Juntos documented testimonies of “inhumane, punitive and dangerous conditions” at Moshannon since the former federal prison was reopened as an ICE detention center under the Biden administration in 2021.

Researchers compiled information from site visits, interviews with former and current detainees and public records requests. They found reports of physical and psychological mistreatment, barriers to justice, including lack of legal representation, and problems with accessing health care. Some detainees said that there was a pattern of using solitary confinement to punish detainees’ for minor infractions.

Sobel said he and the other commissioners have heard of allegations of abuse at Moshannon, but have not received any direct complaints. Sobel also said a federal investigation looking at complaints brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania found that GEO Group Inc. was operating the facility within guidelines.

“From what I can tell and from what I’ve seen, I do believe they do follow all appropriate procedures and policies, and they do keep the health, safety and well being of the detainees in mind in a proper fashion, and do provide for that,” Sobel said. “And again, I want to emphasize this isn’t a facility that we just ignore. We are in regular contact with the facility. We have visited the facility. In fact, we have a visit planned in the near future … I don’t want to ignore those allegations, but until we start seeing some actual allegations that seem to have some substance to them, that actually come across to our desk, and somebody physically comes forward to us and raises something like that, a complaint of that nature, I don’t think, you know, I personally think that that the GEO facility is handling things about as well as they can handle.”

According to ICE’s Detainee Death Reporting list, Ge was the 14th person to die in ICE custody since the start of fiscal year 2025 in October 2024, and the 11th person to die in ICE custody since the start of the current Trump administration.

Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director at Detention Watch Network, a national coalition working to abolish detention, said that number is “very likely an underestimate given ICE’s lack of transparency and reporting.”

Ghandahari said over the past six months, there have been increased reports nationwide of “death, medical neglect, overcrowding, lack of food, and rampant transfers that cut people off from their loved ones and support networks, including legal access to legal counsel.”

“Immigration detention, deprivation of freedom, isolation, uncertainty and abysmal conditions, including inadequate medical care and mental health services, are a lethal combination that puts lives in jeopardy,” she said. “Trump’s cruel mass detention expansion is exacerbating inhumane conditions that are inherent to the ICE detention system and have been well documented now for decades.”