Report: “Inhumane” conditions prevail at Moshannon Valley immigration detention center in Pennsylvania

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A report by Temple University law students and Juntos, a Philadelphia-based immigration organization, documents testimony describing “inhumane, punitive and dangerous conditions” at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center, a privately operated Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania.

With a capacity of 1,876, the facility is the largest immigration detention center in the Northeast. It was formerly a federal prison and reopened as an ICE detention center in 2021. GEO Group, Inc., a private company, operates Moshannon and more than a dozen other ICE detention centers across the country.

“It's a facility rife with massive human rights violations,” said Erika Guadalupe Núñez, executive director of Juntos. Núñez said people arrested by ICE in Philadelphia are most often sent to Moshannon. Most recently, Philadelphia resident Sereyrath “One” Van was sent to the center, according to VietLead's lawyers.

ICE officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The report describes three areas of abuse: physical and psychological abuse, obstacles to access to justice – including lack of legal representation – and health and wellness problems.

Santiago, an Afro-Latino immigrant from Colombia who was held in Moshannon for six months, said at a news conference Thursday that he was “treated like an animal” there and that officials were “very racist.”

Santiago, who used a pseudonym for his own safety, said he had “a minor verbal altercation” with a fellow inmate and was placed in solitary confinement for two months.

“For two months they locked me in a cell, in a hole,” he said. “As if I were a criminal, as if I had murdered someone, even though I had only argued with a fellow inmate. I was very frustrated and felt like I was going crazy in that place.”

He described a pattern of officers using solitary confinement to punish inmates for minor offenses and also claimed that guards physically abused him.

“The truth is that in Moshannon you are not treated like an immigrant, you are treated like a criminal,” Santiago said.