The Moshannon Valley Processing Center is the largest ICE detention facility in the Northeast.
The Moshannon Valley Processing Center (Moshannon) is an immigrant detention facility in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, operated under an intergovernmental service agreement (IGSA) between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and private prison corporation GEO Group.
Once a federal detention facility, it was converted into an ICE detention center in 2021, making it the largest in the Northeast — with the capacity detain to 1,876 people each day, many of them asylum seekers and long-time U.S. residents.
The facility is not run in the public interest. It is run for profit. GEO Group earns $63,000,000 each year from this contract. Clearfield County receives $200,000 annually for its role as the local contracting authority — a role that gives county commissioners the power to end the arrangement entirely.
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Dave Glass
Commissioner
Vowed to vote no on contract renewal.
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John Sobel
Commissioner
“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.
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Tim Winters
Commissioner
“If we do not extend our contract, the facility will not go away — we just will not have any input,” he told TribLive. “This is so blown out of proportion. There’s so much misinformation, and I don’t want to play into it. People don’t understand the issue.”
Have you seen our boards?
“Show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you value.” According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, Philipsburg-Osceola School District spends just under $22,000 per student. In contrast, taxpayers pay $2.86 million per month, plus $10/day per detainee for the first 800 beds and $40/day for beds 801–1,876. These figures inform our estimate of about $48k/person/year in detention costs.
Why do we value cruelty more than educating our children?