‘Shut it down’: Philipsburg protest against nearby ICE facility draws hundreds
A large crowd and chants of “shut it down” filled Cold Stream Dam and Recreation Park on Sunday afternoon during a protest against the nearby Moshannon Valley Processing Center.
The facility, located merely miles away from the park and just over the Centre County border in Morris Township, Clearfield County, is the largest federal detention center in Pennsylvania.
The rally was organized by several civil rights and Indivisible groups from across the state. In addition to drawing awareness to the facility that’s privately owned by the Florida-based GEO Group, organizers of the rally set out to demand the Clearfield County Commissioners end the contract between the county, ICE and the GEO Group.
The crowd of hundreds was largely a mix of people from central Pennsylvania, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Megan Guidi of the Pittsburgh Women for Democracy said they were all there as “one commonwealth united to oppose the cruelty and unnecessary detention” happening near Philipsburg.
“This isn’t just a Philipsburg issue. It’s not just a Clearfield County issue, it’s a Pennsylvania issue. And when we have a Pennsylvania issue, we stand together,” Guidi said.
Luther Gette, a Philipsburg Borough Councilmember, welcomed everyone to the borough.
“We are not only bound as Americans to do these things, we are bound as citizens of the state of Pennsylvania to do these things. Whose statue is on top of the City Hall in Philadelphia? William Penn. Did he invite the immigrants and the needy and the poor to come to Pennsylvania? He did. Now it’s up to us. It’s our generation. Many, many things have gone wrong in Pennsylvania and all over the world … but many things can also go right, if we will just insist on that right,” Gette said.
The Moshannon Valley Processing Center has been in the spotlight during President Donald Trump’s second term due to his aggressive deportation campaign for authorized immigrants, though activists have sounded the alarm about potential abuses at the facility for years.
Guidi and other speakers talked about some issues with the Moshannon Valley Processing Center, like the at least three ACLU lawsuits filed tied to it, including one related to inhumane conditions and lack of language access. She said more than 15 days in solitary confinement is torture, according to United Nations experts, but a 2024 study shows in ICE detention, the average stay in solitary confinement is 27 days.
“According to ICE’s own data, no facility makes use of solitary confinement as much as the Moshannon Valley Processing Center. As of this spring, 147 people were locked in solitary confinement every month. To put that into perspective, the next highest ICE facility held 82 per month,” Guidi said.
There have also been two deaths at the facility since it opened in 2021, including the death earlier this month of Chaofeng Ge, a 32-year-old Chinese national, was found dead by the facility’s staff, hanging by his neck in the shower room of his detention pod.
In an ICE news release focused on Ge, the agency wrote that it “remains committed to ensuring that all those in its custody reside in safe, secure, and humane environments. Comprehensive medical care is provided from the moment individuals arrive and throughout the entirety of their stay.”
Protesters called on the Clearfield County Commissioners to shut down the processing center by ending the contract, freedom for those in the detention center and not transfers into other facilities, and long term they wanted to see all detention centers shut down locally and nationwide.
Some unnamed speakers shared stories from people who had been detained there, or from their family members. They spoke of poor conditions, inadequate nutritional food options such as fresh fruit, lack of visiting information for family members and being threatened by guards.
An average of 1,374 people were at the detention center as of Aug. 4, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data distribution organization founded at Syracuse University.
As speakers shared their message with the hundreds of people gathered in the park, cars and trucks driving by honked in support and waved to the dozens of people lining the bridge and the fence of the park. There were a handful of counter protesters throughout the afternoon and some cars revved their engines and made inappropriate hand gestures out their windows.
Zach Womer, a Philipsburg resident who is running for the state house of representatives, was in the crowd at the protest. He said what brought him to the protest was faith, rather than politics. He talked about the Gospel of Matthew and welcoming strangers.
“I think that if you are a Christian and you believe the Gospel of Matthew, and you are a Protestant, you should be able to — even if it’s something that it’s controversial, I guess, I think that’s kind of the whole point, is standing up when it’s controversial, not when it’s something that’s popular or something that’s good for you to do, to get some sort of a claim. It’s just, I wanted people to see someone like me, a long bearded hillbilly, that supports what they do and cares about people,” Womer said.
He said he doesn’t necessarily agree with everyone at the protest but he was proud to see so many people out and caring about the community on a hot, Sunday afternoon. He said it was a great example of what people can do when they get together.
In an ideal world, Womer said, there would not be private prisons. But the number one thing that needs to happen is transparency, he said.
“If I’m winning a state level office, I won’t have the ability to go to the center. I won’t have the ability to shut it down, but I will always be a loud advocate for, we need to be able to see what’s happening in this prison,” he said. “...To have a prison a mile from my home where I don’t know what’s going on — there’s lots of reports of abuse. I think that represents something that’s fundamentally un-American, and I think that’s something everyone can get around. … I think the goal should be to reduce harm, and whatever gets that done is what I’m interested in.”
Sunday’s protest came after about 50 people gathered in late July outside of the Moshannon Valley Processing Center to draw awareness to the facility.
This story was originally published August 24, 2025 at 4:10 PM.
