Kilmar Abrego Garcia moved to Pennsylvania detention center

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Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador in March, has been transferred from the Farmville Detention Center in Virginia to Moshannon Valley Processing Center.

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys told the court the transfer could make it more difficult to access him and provide counsel because the attorneys are based in Nashville, Tennessee, and New York City. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials told the attorneys that the move “will allow Mr. Abrego-Garcia’s legal team greater access to him,” the filing states, which Abrego Garcia’s attorneys argue is not necessarily true.

“Travel to Moshannon is far more difficult for the members of the defense team based in Nashville, and is not appreciably easier for the New York-based members of the defense team, compared to Farmville,” the filing states.

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys did not immediately return a request for comment Saturday. The Philadelphia ICE field office referred requests for comment to the Department of Homeland Security.

In a statement, Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at DHS, confirmed Abrego Garcia’s transfer to Moshannon, and said he is a “MS-13 gang member, human trafficker, serial domestic abuser, and child predator.”

“We are not going to allow this criminal Salvadoran gang member to be loose on U.S. streets to terrorize American citizens,” she said.

The case has become a major point of contention regarding President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown since taking office earlier this year.

Abrego Garcia, 30, fled El Salvador around 2011 to escape from a gang that had extorted and terrorized his family, court documents state. After initially being denied an application for asylum, an immigration judge granted him protection from being deported in 2019.

The Trump administration facilitated his return back to the United States in June after he was detained and mistakenly deported to an El Salvadoran prison. But upon his return, he was charged with human smuggling and they alleged that he was anMS-13 gang member, a claim Abrego Garcia denies. The administration now wants to deport him to the African nation of Eswatini.

The gang allegation relates to his detention in Maryland back in 2019, when Prince George’s County Police Department officers said he was seen wearing a “Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie with rolls of money covering the eyes, ears and mouth of the presidents on the separate denominations,” court documents state. Officials claimed the paraphernalia was evidence that he was “in good standing with the MS-13.” He was not charged at the time.

The human smuggling charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee. He was pulled over for speeding and, according to body camera footage, officers initially discussed among themselves whether he was a human trafficker because he was traveling with eight passengers who had no luggage. He was ultimately let go with just a warning about an expired driver’s license.

Regarding his transfer, his defense team is also concerned about the conditions at the Pennsylvania detention center. The facility is operated by private prison company The GEO Group, Inc. and holds up to 1,876 people. It was a former federal prison that was reopened in 2021 by the Biden administration as an ICE detention center.

In August, Chaofeng Ge, a 32-year-old Chinese citizen who was detained at the facility, was pronounced dead after he was found hanging by the neck and unresponsive in the shower by staff members.

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys referenced the man’s hanging in their court filings and echoed activists’ concerns about the facility. Several people spoke of “inhumane, punitive and dangerous conditions” at the center in a 2024 report by Temple University law students and the immigrant rights organization Juntos.

“Conditions at Moshannon are also deeply concerning—a detainee died by hanging last month, there have been recent reports of assaults, inadequate medical care, and insufficient food, and the Department of Homeland Security abruptly terminated an internal investigation into allegations of excessive force and abuses by guards at the facility,” the filing states.

U.S. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon was denied access to the facility earlier this month, and told WHYY News her constituents have complained about conditions there.

“There’s a lot of concerns that arise when you have the government incarcerating people and hiding what’s going on behind those walls — and that’s the purpose for doing oversight,” Scanlon said at the time.

Advocates have called on the Clearfield County Commissioners to end its contract with ICE, which allows the federal agency to lease the former federal prison.

Jasmine Rivera, executive director of the Pennsylvania Immigration Coalition, a statewide immigrant rights organization, said Abrego Garcia’s transfer to the facility “is yet another example of exactly why we need to shut down Moshannon detention center.”

“This is a facility that has a track record of abuse since it opened in 2021,” she said. “Two people have died in this prison, and we’ve only ever heard from those being detained there that conditions have gotten even worse in 2025.”

The Shut Down Detention Campaign is holding a rally in solidarity with Abrego Garcia on Monday outside of the detention center.

ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment over concerns about conditions at Moshannon.

In the aftermath of Ge’s death in August, the agency said in a statement that it is “committed to ensuring that all those in its custody reside in safe, secure, and humane environments.”

According to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, more than 1,400 people were detained at Moshannon as of Sept. 15, the highest population the center has seen so far this year.