Activists draw attention to ICE facility near Philipsburg with protest, calls for action
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Activists held a protest at Moshannon Valley Processing Center in rural PA.
- The ACLU cited alleged abuses despite ICE’s 2025 ‘Superior’ facility rating.
- The GEO-run detention center averaged 1,340 detainees as of June 23, 2025.
Nestled in the Appalachian Mountains near rural Philipsburg is the Moshannon Valley Processing Center, the largest federal immigration detention center in Pennsylvania and the rest of the Northeast.
Privately owned by the Florida-based GEO Group, it has a capacity of 1,876, employs hundreds and costs millions to operate.
Indivisible: Mayday of Brockport in Elk County co-founder Bobbi Erickson dubbed it the “Black Bear Alcatraz,” an ode to the new immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades known as “Alligator Alcatraz.”
Tucked into the woods, the facility is easy to overlook — something Erickson hoped to change. She and about 50 people gathered outside the facility Sunday to draw attention to its existence and spark more questions. Other groups involved in organizing the protest included Pittsburgh Women for Democracy, Indivisible Montgomery County, PA and Friends, Indivisible: Mayday of Brockport and Indivisible: Outcry of Clarion.
“This is a for-profit facility,” Erickson said Monday. “There are people that are making money the more people that are incarcerated in this facility.”
A record average of 1,340 people were at the detention center as of June 23, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data distribution organization founded at Syracuse University. Under President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda in his second term, concern has grown among immigration and civil rights activists who have sounded the alarm about potential abuses at the facility for years.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and two other advocacy groups filed a complaint last year with the Department of Homeland Security after hearing from frustrated and fearful people detained there. The complaint detailed what they consider inhumane, unconstitutional and punitive conditions.
Allegations included inadequate medical care, a lack of interpretation services and discrimination from staff. Receiving outside medical care had grown to be so adversarial it deterred some women from seeking it, one woman told the ACLU.
A man told the ACLU he was coughing and urinating blood for nearly four months before he was brought to an outside hospital. He said he attempted suicide due to severe depression.
A month after the civil rights complaint was filed, three detainees were stabbed in a large fight.
A three-day compliance investigation carried out in March by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ended with the facility receiving a “Superior” rating, though some are skeptical of the findings. The agency identified zero deficiencies after reviewing 28 standards.
That was an improvement from its 2024 inspection, when ICE said it found eight deficiencies in areas including correspondence, detainee transfers, medical care and significant self-harm. That earned the facility a “Good” rating.
At the time the ACLU filed its complaint, a GEO Group spokesperson said the facility “rigorous standards, and it provides all the services required by ICE.”
Erickson, the organizer of Sunday’s protest, is hopeful an elected official in Pennsylvania will soon tour the facility and offer a public accounting of what they observed. With detention centers like Moshannon operating quietly across the country, she said the first step toward what she views as positive change is making sure people know they’re there.
“In a perfect world, facilities like this that are incarcerating people that aren’t guilty of anything don’t exist at all,” Erickson said.