Reps. Lee, Dean, Deluzio, Demand Answers from ICE, GEO Group about Violations at Moshannon Detention Center

Letter to ICE | Letter to GEO Group

PITTSBURGH, PA – AUGUST 5, 2026 — Today, Congresswoman Summer L. Lee (PA-12), Congresswoman Madeleine Dean (PA-04), and Congressman Chris Deluzio (PA-17) wrote letters to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the GEO Group, the for-profit prison corporation that owns and operates Moshannon Valley Detention Center in Philipsburg, PA, to demand answers on GEO’s failure to comply with federal standards of adequate staffing and medical care to detainees, as well as obstruction of congressional oversight. 

Ahead of GEO’s Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Call, the Pennsylvania lawmakers are clear: “There shouldn’t be earnings calls for human detention.”

Congresswoman Lee and Congressman Deluzio previously conducted an unannounced oversight to Moshannon — which began operating as an ICE facility in 2021 — on May 28. They previously attempted to conduct a Moshannon visit in August 2025. Congresswoman Dean conducted an announced congressional oversight on June 17. 

In August 2025, 32-year-old Chaofeng Ge died by suicide at Moshannon. In 2023, 37-year-old Frankline Okpu died in custody. In December 2025, 46-year-old Fouad Saeed Abdulkadir died in custody.

“These failures are not accidental; they are the predictable result of a privatized, for-profit detention business model. As a publicly traded entity, GEO has a strict legal obligation, a fiduciary duty, to act in the best interest of its shareholders. GEO’s focus on maximizing shareholder value drives aggressive cost cutting across medical personnel, nutritional quality, and translation services,” the lawmakers continued.

The lawmakers requested answers from both ICE and GEO regarding federal contract compliance, a commitment to congressional oversight, and recusal agreements governing former ICE and DHS officials currently employed by or consulting for GEO and current ICE and DHS employees formerly employed by or consulting for GEO.

Congresswoman Summer Lee has been a leading voice in Congress demanding accountability, transparency, and an end to ICE’s cruel detention and deportation system. She recently sent a letter with Rep. Deluzio to the Department of Health and Human Services and Office of Refugee Resettlement demanding answers about ORR's decision to place unaccompanied migrant children at Abraxas Academy in Morgantown, Pennsylvania, despite the facility's extensive record of documented child abuse violations. Rep. Lee has called to abolish ICE and oppose billions in additional ICE funding, introduced legislation to end ICE detention and redirect funding toward care, due process, and community-based services, demanded answers from ICE after the detention of a Brentwood asylum seeker, visited and called for the closure of the Moshannon Detention Facility following reports of abuse, retaliation, and a hunger strike, and recently conducted oversight of ICE detention conditions at Moshannon Valley ICE Detention Center after being illegally denied entry. She also released a statement after public reporting confirmed that the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled the death of Daphy Michel, a 31-year-old Haitian immigrant who died after being released from ICE custody, a homicide.

Read the full letter to GEO here. Read the full letter to ICE here.

Congresswoman Summer Lee serves on the House Committee on Judiciary and the Committee on Education and Workforce. Since taking office in January 2023, she has delivered historic levels of federal investment totaling over $2.7 Billion brought back to Western PA, including over $580 million for infrastructure, over $110 million for affordable transit, over $500 million to keep clean energy manufacturing at home in Pennsylvania, and over $55 million on clean energy efforts in and around schools to help keep our kids and communities safe. These investments will help improve Western Pennsylvania’s infrastructure and transit, ensure cleaner air and drinking water, lower housing costs, fund research institutions, fuel clean manufacturing, fund STEM innovation and entrepreneurship, boost workforce development, and create thousands of good paying union jobs.  Lee and her team have also delivered casework and constituent services to over 4,000 constituents with issues ranging from helping our seniors and disabled community access Medicare and social security to helping folks secure housing and helping families with immigration support and passports.