Deep in the woods in the dead center of Pennsylvania, Philipsburg is a rural, post-coal mining town in the Allegheny Plateau of the Appalachian Mountains. Philipsburg is where my grandparents were raised, where their parents were raised, and where I grew up spending my summers in our family home outside of town in Black Moshannon State Park. The rolling Appalachian hills raised me too, this is one of the most beautiful corners of the world.
The buildings are crumbling, the streets are quiet, the residents have been attempting to rebuild after being left behind in former Appalachian coal town fashion, and the area is deeply, deeply conservative. This is real Trump country, in real, raw America. Everybody knows everybody, there are no police, the town feels stuck in the 1990s at most. The school system is well below average, many live in poverty, and opioid and methamphetamine addiction is more common than not. Nothing really goes on here. Except for the fact that the largest ICE detention facility in the Northeastern United States is hidden in the woods outside of the center of town.
With a capacity of almost 2,000 beds, Moshannon Valley Processing Center was formerly a low-security federal prison, and repurposed into a ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) detention facility owned by the Geo Group, the largest private prison contractor in the United States. The change was made in 2021, when the Biden administration signed an executive order barring the renewal of contracts with private prison groups. This order did not apply for ICE facilities. Although accelerated, the atrocities are not a result of the Trump administration, this predates Trump, even his first term.
I’ve kept up with this facility and laying out this ongoing project for well over a year now. With each new first hand account, each lawsuit, and each death report that comes out, each one seems more horrific than the last. Suicides, physical, mental and sexual abuse, grossly inadequate health care, unfair solitary confinement, and unlivable conditions doesn’t even begin scratch the surface of the atrocities in this facility.
Just as we see in many other ICE holding facilities, MVPC was not meant to hold prisoners long term, yet the average stay in the facility is 78 days. Many have spent over a year in this facility as others fall ill around them due to inhumane conditions, as they are denied calls with lawyers, while hearings continue to be delayed. Reminder that over 70% of immigrants detained by ICE have no criminal convictions.
After years of whispers and cover ups, the abuses at MVPC further came to light after 32 year old Chaofeng Ge of China, died by suicide in the facility in late 2025. Since last year, over 45 people have died in ICE custody. But what makes Ge’s death stand out is the suspicious way in which they found him hanging in a shower, with his hands and feet tied together as well. Of course this immediately raised questions of…quite literally how that is even possible, but instead of providing answers, the facility and the Geo Group have only continued to falsify records and refuse to provide any evidence.
Since Ge’s death 3 people have died in the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in total.
Despite these violations being confirmed and documented, Immigration and Customs Enforcement says there is nothing that they can do as the Geo Group operates the ICE facility, and they continue to write the corporation more checks.
As the clock hits 11am, Philipsburg residents walk through the doors of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church for a free community lunch. I hand rolls out to families, workers with hands covered in black dirt, and elderly residents. Some are not members of the church, but looking for resources and community.
One of the women with the church’s grandson had taken a job at Moshannon Valley Processing Center straight out of high school. He quit after seeing the horrific conditions and abuses in the prison.
The Geo Group is one of the two largest private prison contractors in the United States, with the largest number of ICE beds in the country. The crimes of the Geo Group are well known, with the most common lawsuits against the corporation relating to using slave labor, paying prisoners less than $1 a day for hard labor, and locking people in solitary confinement when they refuse orders. ( GEO Group, Inc. v. Menocal, Raul Novoa, et al. v. The GEO Group ).
While the already struggling and left behind taxpayers have no choice but to fund the cruel confinement of others and separation of families, the Geo Group continues to profit millions, millions, and millions of dollars. This is a system built to profit off of human suffering, it benefits nobody but the corporations and ultra-wealthy.
Controversy around private prisons has been a conversation forever. But when you drive through the small country backroads beside numerous Trump signs as people continue to live their quiet lives while people are dying across the ATV path in the woods, you have to wonder how much of an impact the culture around idolizing Trump and MAGA ideology that is so deeply ingrained in Appalachia plays in turning a blind eye to the concentration camp down the road. And to what extent does the factor of the facility being the largest employer in a rural town after the mines shut down play into that as well? Or do they really just not know?
I aim to find the answers to these questions as I am lucky enough to have an in– a connection to this small town, a connection to the people of this small town. I aim to document these answers with my camera to show the complexity of this issue, the complexity of Appalachian culture, and how the cycle of these communities supporting things that seems to only hurt them further continues on in these rolling mountains and valleys. I have been searching for that answer for years.
As I drive through town at sunrise below the dark traffic lights that have seemingly lost power, towards the small dirt roads that allow me to get a glimpse at the facility in the distance, I think about sitting at dinner the night before, and my Great Uncle subtlety motioning to the only other people in the restaurant, decked out in Second Amendment and Under Armour USA merch as I said the words ‘Geo Group’ and ‘ICE’.
I saved my questions for a different time.
Apart of an ongoing project on Moshannon Valley Processing Center, and the Appalachian region as a whole.