Plans for major immigrant detention center near Philipsburg move forward after ACLU drops lawsuit
A civil rights organization withdrew its lawsuit that challenged whether a former private federal prison in Clearfield County could reopen as a major immigrant detention center, a spokesperson wrote in an email Wednesday.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania accused the county’s commissioners of violating state law by signing the contracts without offering the public an opportunity to weigh in.
The legal challenge prompted the county’s decision-makers to arrange a special meeting days later to reaffirm the five-year contracts with the GEO Group and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
The meeting was announced properly, but does not “change the reality that immigration detention is incredibly problematic and dehumanizing,” ACLU immigrants’ rights attorney Vanessa Stine said in a statement.
“Such a big decision should have involved robust community engagement,” Stine said. “The Biden administration, Clearfield County, and GEO Group are engaged in systematic separation of families and breaking apart of communities. People with pending immigration cases should be home with their loved ones while their cases proceed.”
The pact is worth upward of $170 million in operating costs alone, according to a copy of the contract obtained by the Centre Daily Times.
“I’m glad they saw fit to withdraw the suit,” Clearfield County Commissioner Dave Glass wrote in an email Thursday. “As I said at the special meeting, we are always available to the public — via email, phone, or appointment — to discuss any matter of interest to our constituents.”
The proposed facility has nearly 1,900 beds and would be the largest immigrant detention center in the Northeast, the ACLU and immigrants’ rights group Juntos said.
The agreement came in the wake of York County ending its decadeslong practice of contracting with ICE to detain immigrant men at its jail while they worked through immigration proceedings.
“Fighting against new and repurposed immigration detention centers in Pennsylvania is beginning to feel like a horrible game of whack-a-mole,” Stine and Juntos Executive Director Erika Guadalupe Núñez wrote after Clearfield County reaffirmed the contracts.
Repurposing the former Moshannon Valley Correctional Center that sits less than five miles from Philipsburg could bring upward of 300 jobs to the region. The GEO Group is the top taxpayer in the Philipsburg-Osceola Area School District.
The facility was expected to open by mid-to-late November, Scotto said in September. It was not immediately clear if the lawsuit delayed the facility’s opening. ICE did not immediately respond to request for comment.
This story was originally published November 11, 2021 at 11:50 AM.