Amid Trump’s deportation push, revenues grow for company running Pa. ICE detention center

Monthly fees charged by the for-profit contractor that runs Pennsylvania’s largest immigration detention center have increased by hundreds of thousands of dollars during the massive deportation push launched by President Donald Trump this year.

The increasing amounts, based in part on a per-person rate, reflect the growing population at Moshannon Valley Processing Center, the Clearfield County facility that acts as a hub for immigration detention in the Northeast.

Invoices obtained by USA TODAY Network Pennsylvania show that officials owed the company, GEO Group, $4.5 million in December, an amount that was in line with most other months in 2024. Those monthly payments have been on an upward trajectory this year, and by May the operators were billing Clearfield County more than $5.3 million, according to the records from 2023 to the present.

The site, a former federal prison, has long stirred controversy, with civil rights advocates alleging that migrants suffer from discrimination, lack of access to legal services and inadequate medical care while confined there.

These concerns have only grown in recent months, as Trump’s immigration enforcement campaign has brought an influx of people to the facility, and as federal officials rebuff attempts at congressional oversight.

But even as activists and congressional Democrats demand reforms and urge local officials to take GEO Group to task, the government has been writing larger and larger checks to the prison operators, the invoice records indicate. And some of the increases predated the Trump administration, according to the invoices, which show that the billed amounts were also heading upward during former President Joe Biden’s term.

Bobbi Erickson, a Jefferson County activist who is calling for the facility’s closure, expressed outrage at the rising monthly sums.

“Behind every invoice is a real person being separated from their family and locked in a cage,” Erickson said. “And our taxes are paying for that.”

However, Clearfield County Commissioner Dave Glass isn’t sure canceling the contract is the right move. Though the Democrat objects to certain aggressive tactics used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE.) and the detainment of some migrants, he doesn’t have any particular complaint about GEO Group or the way they’re running Moshannon Valley Processing Center.

And he’s not convinced detainees would benefit if the Pennsylvania facility were to shut its doors.

“Have I made myself feel better because (the detainees) aren’t here, only to put these people in Alligator Alcatraz, which I am 100% sure is worse for them than this facility?” he said. “But that doesn’t mean by any means that I think we have an ideal situation here.”

What do the billing statements show?

GEO Group runs Moshannon Valley Processing Center, a 1,876-bed detention facility, under a five-year intergovernmental agreement that ICE and Clearfield County entered in September 2021. Federal officials at the time reported the contract was worth about $264 million, which breaks down to about $4.4 million per month.

Through the agreement, the company is entitled to a flat monthly management fee, along with compensation for transporting detainees, running a work-release program and other costs.

The government’s original agreement with GEO Group put the fixed management rate at about $2.9 million, but the invoices show that total jumped to about $3.3 million in October 2023 and again to $3.4 million in May.

The fixed monthly transportation costs also went up in May by about $140,000, billing records show.

In addition, GEO Group charges a per diem amount calculated from the population of the detention center, and this is the line item that has seen the most significant bump over the past couple years.

The invoices show GEO Group was averaging about $520,000 per month for this occupancy-based payment in 2023, and was charging between $700,000 to $860,000 each month in 2024. These amounts continued to climb through the first half of 2025 and had surged to more than $1.2 million by June, according to the invoices.

While ICE statistics indicate the center’s population has grown in recent months, it’s not clear whether a change to the per diem rate might also be inflating this variable cost.

But since 2023, when the average invoice totaled about $4 million, GEO Group has added more than $1 million to what it’s charging the government monthly.

The recent increases are one of many examples of how the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has boosted business for GEO Group, as company leaders predicted it would. In an August earnings call, Executive Chairman George Zoley credited the federal enforcement ramp-up with creating “unprecedented growth opportunities” for the business.

Across the facilities that GEO Group runs for federal immigration enforcement, the number of occupied beds has jumped from about 15,000 to 20,000, Zoley said, reporting that this is “the highest level of ICE utilization in our company’s history.”

Executives also reported they were working with ICE to open several new sites across the U.S., estimating the additional facilities would generate tens of millions of dollars in new revenue for the company.

The company did not respond to an email seeking comment.

Activists push to close the center down

Erickson, who’s part of a coalition called the Shut Down Detention Campaign, fundamentally opposes for-profit prisons, arguing that no one should be making money because of another person’s confinement.

“The deal that they have is a sweetheart deal for the private prison company and a raw deal for taxpayers,” the activist, who also cofounded a group called Indivisible Mayday, said. “Why do taxpayers have to fund to separate families?”

Erickson’s group is calling on Clearfield County commissioners to end the deal with GEO Group and shut down the facility, and in recent days, they’ve been organizing protests to show support for a closure.

Glass said he’s not confident the county has the power to close the facility, which is owned by GEO Group. If commissioners scrapped the intergovernmental agreement with ICE, he suspects federal officials would simply contract directly with the company instead of using the county as a go-between.

Also in August, a former detainee at the center filed a lawsuit claiming that a chaplain at the center had sexually abused her repeatedly while she was there.

However, the recent death of a 32-year-old Chinese immigrant who was being held at the center only fueled concern about the conditions faced by detainees and amplified calls for its closure. The man’s death was ruled a suicide.

Allegations against Moshannon Valley Processing Center have been serious and plentiful enough that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2024 launched a broad investigation into the facility. In a memo, the agency’s civil rights and civil liberties office reported receiving 88 complaints about the center from October 2023 to August 2024, including a submission from the ACLU of Pennsylvania that claimed “egregious and unconstitutional conditions.”

The start of the Trump administration cast uncertainty over the fate of that federal investigation.

And in recent weeks, some efforts to check conditions at the center have met resistance.

U.S. Reps. Summer Lee and Mary Gay Scanlon made separate visits to the Philipsburg center in August and asked to enter the facility, asserting their legal right as members of Congress to inspect sites “used to detain or otherwise house aliens.” The Pennsylvania Democrats each said they waited more than an hour but were ultimately turned away.

The Department of Homeland Security recently adopted policies restricting members of Congress from ICE field offices and asking them to schedule visits to detention centers at least seven days in advance. A group of Democratic representatives filed a lawsuit contesting the rules and demanding the right to conduct unannounced visits.

Lee condemned the decision to block her from Moshannon Valley Processing Center and said her constituents deserve to know what’s happening within the facility’s walls.

“Transparency and accountability are non-negotiables in a democracy,” she said. “And ICE cannot be allowed to operate in the shadows.”

Glass said he’s not defending ICE for denying entry to the representatives, but he noted that GEO Group recently gave him and other commissioners a scheduled tour of the facility. The officials spent several hours in the center, he said.