Clearfield County will make $1 million over five years to act as the middleman between ICE and the private contractor that operates the Moshannon Valley Processing Center, the largest immigration detention facility in the Northeast.
The county enters the final year of its contracts with ICE and the GEO Group as the Trump administration has intensified efforts to deport undocumented immigrants.
Moshannon — which had already been accused of physical and psychological abuse, inadequate health care, and poor conditions — has also come under increased scrutiny over the past several months after the hanging death of Chaofeng Ge, a Chinese citizen who was detained at the facility near Philipsburg.
Local advocates have protested, called for Moshannon’s closure, and pressured county commissioners not to renew the contracts for the detention center.
Abigail Grimes-Haldiman, who is part of Indivisible Mayday, told Spotlight PA that no amount of money justifies the facility staying open. Indivisible Mayday is a grassroots organization that protests what it deems to be right-wing agendas.
“We don’t have to evoke human suffering in order to make money for the county,” Grimes-Haldiman said.
In September 2021, the Clearfield County commissioners voted to enter into a five-year intergovernmental service agreement with ICE “to provide detention services for detainees,” according to the agreement.
The commissioners also approved a services contract with GEO Group, an international company based in Florida that owns and operates correctional and detention facilities around the globe. It “requires GEO to perform all duties and accept all responsibilities incumbent upon” the county under its agreement with ICE, according to the contract.
The ACLU sued the commissioners after they signed the contracts with ICE and GEO Group, alleging commissioners violated the state’s open meetings law.
Also under the contract, GEO Group agrees to pay the county an administrative fee of $200,000 per year “in recognition of [county] costs in time and resources.”
That $200,000 yearly payment accounts for less than 0.5% of Clearfield County’s annual budget. The county projected revenues of $41.7 million in 2025.
The administrative fee goes into the county’s general fund and isn’t earmarked for any specific purpose, Clearfield County Commissioner Dave Glass told Spotlight PA.
USA Today reported that GEO Group billed the federal government $4.5 million in December, which was about on par for most of the other months in 2024. But in 2025, those monthly payments have been on an upward trajectory, reaching $5.3 million in May.
That money essentially passes from ICE to Clearfield County to GEO Group.
The contract “helps GEO to circumvent onerous federal contracting requirements that exist when a private company directly contracts with the federal government,” according to an August 2024 report from Temple University’s Sheller Center for Social Justice.
The detention center contracts run through the end of next September, and Clearfield County commissioners will decide next year whether they will be renewed.
“All things being equal, I anticipate my advocating a renewal of the contract as I do not believe that the resident detainees’ civil rights are being violated at GEO and I do believe that they are receiving all other protections afforded to them by American law on the part of the institution,” Commissioner John Sobel told Spotlight PA.
Commissioner Tim Winters told Spotlight PA that he didn’t see a reason not to renew the contract.
While Glass said he’s generally happy with GEO Group, he has concerns about the way ICE agents have been conducting themselves and said they would give him pause before voting to renew contracts for the Moshannon facility.
Glass told Spotlight PA he understands deporting known criminals or individuals with criminal connections who have had due process.
“But rounding people up who have been upstanding members of American communities for years — in some cases decades — makes no sense to me and seems like a serious overreaction,” Glass said.
According to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, as of mid-September the most recent average daily population numbers for Moshannon are 1,404 — up from 1,171 when Trump was inaugurated.
(TRAC is a nonprofit that tracks federal agency data, including on immigration.)
The facility has a capacity of 1,876, according to GEO Group’s website.
It was previously owned and operated by GEO Group as a federal prison until March 2021, when former President Joe Biden signed an executive order banning private prison contracts.
The prison employed 300 people before it closed, WPSU reported.
Eight months later, the facility reopened as an ICE immigration detention center.
Sobel said in 2021 that the move would offer “well-paying, family sustaining jobs” to many of the former prison employees, according to the newsroom.
He told Spotlight PA that Moshannon Valley Processing Center “has a great economic impact.”
According to Winters, the facility employs 407 full-time GEO Group employees and about two dozen full-time ICE employees. He said it also pays property taxes that go to the Philipsburg-Osceola Area School District and fund “essential services” in Decatur Township.