Clearfield commissioners set to vote on contract extension for Moshannon detention center; Spotlight PA, September 18, 2026

Melissa Pérez-Carrillo, Spotlight PA; Clearfield commissioners set to vote on contract extension for Moshannon detention center

"The Clearfield County Board of Commissioners is scheduled to vote Tuesday on whether to sign a six-month contract extension for the operation of Moshannon Valley Processing Center, the largest immigration detention facility in the Northeast.

The commissioners’ five-year agreements with ICE and GEO Group are set to expire in late September.

The county acts as a middleman between the government agency and the private contractor that owns and operates Moshannon. For its part, the county receives $200,000 per year. The setup offered a workaround to former President Joe Biden’s 2021 executive order banning private federal prisons, which President Donald Trump reversed in 2025.

The contract extension modifies the staffing plan and changes the contracting officer, but “all other terms and conditions remain unchanged,” according to a copy of the document obtained through a public records request.

Clearfield County Commissioner Dave Glass told Spotlight PA he’s voting no on the six-month extension, citing concerns about the behavior of ICE officers and saying he doesn’t support the federal government’s immigration policies. He said he feels more strongly about it than ever. Though he initially supported the arrangement and voted to approve the contract in 2021, he said it is the vote he regrets the most since becoming commissioner.

Since Moshannon reopened in 2021 as an immigration detention facility, it has drawn criticism from advocates for poor-quality food, inadequate healthcare, and inhumane conditions. The facility’s population has only risen as the Trump administration has escalated federal immigration policy and quickened deportations at a historic rate."

‘It’s torture’: prisoners’ letters expose subterranean Oklahoma ‘dungeon’ known as the tombs; The Guardian, June 11, 2026

Hilary Andersson , The Guardian; ‘It’s torture’: prisoners’ letters expose subterranean Oklahoma ‘dungeon’ known as the tombs

"Dungeons have housed American prisoners as far back as the revolutionary war, but most underground cells – including those at the notorious island prison Alcatraz – have long since been decommissioned.

Today, there is no national database for prisons that continue to use buried or partly buried facilities. A handful of other facilities do reportedly still use underground cells, but the practice is rare.

The letters from H Unit offer a glimpse into this sunless world. The prisoners – of whom there are currently 248 in total, according to prison authorities – write of living in squalor, and frequent violence and rape. Many are held in solitary confinement, with almost no human contact. Others stay in two-person cells, where they say violence is common because the space is not large enough for two men...

The Death Penalty Information Center said: “These allegations about Oklahoma’s H Unit raise new and serious concerns about whether the constitutional obligations of prison officials are being met, and they deserve close scrutiny.”"