ICE Weighs Buying Moshannon Valley Detention Facility Outright as Clearfield County PA Contract Nears September Expiration

Clearfield County, Pennsylvania’s intergovernmental service agreement with ICE and GEO Group for the Moshannon Valley Processing Center — the largest ICE detention facility in the Northeast, with capacity for 1,876 people — is set to expire September 28, 2026, and neither the county nor GEO Group has received a renewal proposal from ICE. Instead, ICE published a request for information in mid-July on “turn-key detention services” for central Pennsylvania, and local activists believe ICE is weighing either a direct contract with GEO Group that bypasses the county, or purchasing the facility outright. Clearfield County currently earns $200,000 per year from the arrangement.

This is the same lease-to-ownership pattern this corpus has now tracked at multiple sites: DHS’s direct purchase of CoreCivic’s Otay Mesa, California facility (2026-07-02–dhs-buys-corecivic-otay-mesa-california-city-1-5b-oversight-shield) and its purchase of the Prairie Correctional and Leavenworth facilities from CoreCivic (2026-08-04–corecivic-536m-contract-reopen-appleton-mn-prairie-correctional). A federal purchase at Moshannon Valley would remove Clearfield County’s remaining leverage entirely — the county currently at least holds a renewal decision; direct federal ownership eliminates even that. The facility already carries a documented oversight-evasion incident, where a detainee was placed in solitary confinement and transferred out of state after protesting conditions (2026-06-04–moshannon-ice-detainee-solitary-then-transferred-louisiana-after-protest).