‘Gross human rights violations’ at ICE detention center

Philadelphia

When immigrants are picked up from their communities and eventually detained at Moshannon Valley Processing Center, Pennsylvania’s largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center, they are forced to endure “punitive, inhumane and dangerous conditions.” The charge of “widespread human rights violations” was made in a report by the Stephen and Sandra Sheller Center for Social Justice, with support from the Pennsylvania American Civil Liberties Union.   

Entitled “In the Shadow of the Valley: The Unnecessary Confinement and Dehumanizing Conditions of People in Immigration Detention at Moshannon Valley Processing Center,” the report was released at a press conference at Temple University Beasley School of Law on Sept. 4.

Santiago, an immigrant from Colombia and former detainee at Moshannon, said at the press conference: “The truth is, Moshannon is a place where they don’t treat you like an immigrant, but as if you were a criminal,” Santiago, who used an assumed name to protect himself, said he was “treated like an animal” there and that officers were “very racist.” He was put in solitary confinement for two months just for having “a small verbal argument” with a fellow detainee. Santiago described how guards assaulted him and how they use solitary confinement to punish detainees for minor infractions. 

Each year, ICE holds hundreds of thousands of people in detention facilities while they await their immigration court hearings. Being sent to Moshannon or another ICE facility is not supposed to be a punishment. The U.S. Constitution does not allow those in civil detention to be subject to punishment or conditions that amount to punishment.  

No one at Moshannon is there to serve time after being convicted of a crime. On the contrary, they are asylum seekers who are forced into detention to ensure their appearance in court. Some are long-time permanent residents — including primary breadwinners or parents of U.S.-born children — detained and taken away from their communities based on old allegations, no matter how trivial. 

Prisons for profit

Moshannon was formerly a federal prison and re-opened as an ICE detention center in 2021. With a capacity of 1,876, Moshannon is the largest immigrant detention center in the northeast U.S. 

Because private prisons are notorious for violence, abuse and unjustified deaths, President Joe Biden was forced by community pressure to sign Executive Order 14006 on Jan. 26, 2021, directing the Department of Justice to cease the renewal of federal contracts with private prisons. However, the order does not apply to Homeland Security and ICE facilities. The notorious GEO Group, Inc., a private company with $2.4 billion in revenue in 2023, operates Moshannon and more than a dozen other ICE detention centers in the U.S. 

Through a “fixed-rate contract,” ICE pays GEO Group to maintain a certain number of beds at detention centers regardless of whether or not they are being used. Thus, detention centers that are under fixed-rate contracts, like Moshannon, may house significantly fewer people than what the contract requires, which encourages ICE to fill rather than let the surplus beds go unused. As a result, money drives immigration detention, not actual need. 

Deplorable, dehumanizing conditions

The report is the first to comprehensively investigate conditions at Moshannon. It is based on interviews with 77 people recently or formerly incarcerated there, from public records requests and research on the national state of immigration detention. 

It exposes deplorable conditions at this facility, such as unnecessary barriers to justice, problems with health and wellbeing and physical and psychological mistreatment, including solitary confinement.

The majority of immigrants at Moshannon are people of color. Of the 77 people at Moshannon interviewed in the spring of 2023, almost half were Latiné while over 30% were African and other Black immigrants More than half had been living in the U.S. for more than 10 years when they were forced into detention. In fact, 36% of people had been living in the U.S. for more than 20 years, while only 15% had been living in the U.S. for less than five years.  

While most people detained at Moshannon were living in Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey and New York, some were from as far away as California, Texas, North Carolina or Utah.

Of the 77 immigrants interviewed, 50% reported instances of general mistreatment by facility staff, 58% expressed medical and mental health care issues, 31% were subject to racial or derogatory slurs, 6% were the victims of physical force and 10% were threatened with being transferred to an out-of state facility, even further away from their families and supporters. 

People detained at Moshannon reported staff have physically abused them using excessive force, including chokeholds. Non-English speakers in detention recounted how staff treated them worse. 

Women reported they were given less access to resources such as recreation time, the law library and even the cafeteria when compared to men. 

People complained that accessing counsel for their immigration proceedings was made difficult and that their complaints were ignored or resulted in retaliation and abuse by staff. Without adequate legal representation, people have a hard time asserting their rights in immigration court.  

ICE ‘too broken for piecemeal reforms’

The Moshannon report explains there are “alternative(s) to detention programs that can work to vet, process and support immigrants in their immigration court proceedings while they live with their families within communities in the U.S. These programs cost a fraction of the $1.8 billion that we are set to spend on immigration detention this year.”

The report charges that ICE “is a system too broken for piecemeal reforms and needs to be abolished.” It ends with a call for “the closure of Moshannon.” Readers are encouraged to read the full report at shorturl.at/ezDFB. 

The ACLU-PA and other groups have filed a federal complaint over “inhumane conditions” at Moshannon Valley Processing Center with the Department of Homeland Security’s Civil Rights and Civil Liberties office. In a press release announcing that lawsuit, a detainee identified as Jose said: “I wouldn’t wish on anyone what I went through at Moshannon because of the conditions there, the way I was treated and the racism I experienced. Even though I am in ICE detention, I am a human being.” (shorturl.at/8xf2o)

All workers are entitled to human rights, whether they possess citizenship papers or not! Abolish ICE!