Christopher Deluzio

Two Democrats from Allegheny County on Thursday conducted the first unannounced congressional visit under the Trump administration of the controversial Moshannon Valley Processing Center — finding what they said was concerning activity inside.

U.S. Reps. Summer Lee of Swissvale and Chris Deluzio of Fox Chapel arrived with their teams around 10:30 a.m. at the Clearfield County facility, which has operated as a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention site since 2021.

Local and national immigrants-rights advocates have consistently called for the closure of Moshannon amid allegations of inhumane conditions at the center, which is about 130 miles from Pittsburgh.

Moshannon — the largest immigrant detention facility in the Northeast — is a Geo Group prison, which is a for-profit, private prison corporation based out of Florida.

The company is publicly traded (GEO) and is ICE’s largest contractor, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.

Zoe Bluffstone, a Deluzio spokeswoman who was onsite, said the representatives were let in around 11 a.m. They were inside the facility for about two hours.

Spanish-speaking translators on their staffs, however, were barred from entering, Bluffstone said. Because of this, the breadth of conversations with those detained in Moshannon were limited, the representatives said.

However, Lee and Deluzio concluded there were “major differences” between what Moshannon leadership told Congress, as well as what detained people shared with them during the visit — especially regarding medical care, food quality and the ability to stay updated on their legal cases.

Lee said during their time in Moshannon, they got “a pretty sanitized tour” but were given access to the women’s unit — where people were willing to share what they’ve been going through.

“They took us through a number of the units … the medical facilities … and a couple of the pods,” she said. “There were a lot of concerning things that were brought up.”

Detained women expressed concerns about food and medical care, including care for pregnant women, according to their findings shared publicly after the visit.

Lee said she and Deluzio met two pregnant women. One of these women has been experiencing bleeding, according to Lee, and the woman is “not even sure the status of their pregnancy.”

“We heard people talk about some of their abuses,” Lee said. “Some of the complaints that we heard about food and other things … pretty revealing.”

Inside Moshannon, Deluzio said, they observed that most detained people are classified as “low security,” meaning they have not been charged with serious crimes or engaged in violent behavior while detained at the facility.

“That tells me this mass deportation effort that this administration is doing, it’s showing up for people in this facility right here,” he said.

This does not include women, which Lee said have all been classified as “high security risk.”

“We talked to women who didn’t know why they were classified the way they were,” she said. “A number of people who are there just trying to figure out what happens next — what is the progress of their cases?”

When detainees first step into the detention center facility, their risk level is quickly determined — and it shows in the color of their jumpsuit, Warden Leonard Oddo previously told TribLive. Red marks those classified as high-risk, yellow signals medium-high and blue identifies low-risk individuals.

“The blue is housed all in separate units, and highs are housed with medium highs,” Oddo said at the time. “They’re never housed together — we never house lows with highs.”

Moshannon Valley Processing Center leadership was not immediately available Thursday for comment on the representatives’ visit.

Clearfield County Commissioner Dave Glass, who previously has toured the facility, also told TribLive previously that the blue jumpsuits are for people with no criminal background, the yellow for some criminal background and the red for those with “very serious” criminal backgrounds.

“What our hope, and I think that what we understand, is that there was very little cause for the detention of so many of these people here,” Lee said. “And right now, there could be a message sent that we don’t want the ‘in perpetuity’ detention of human beings in this place.”

Randy Cordova-Flores, Deluzio’s constituent, is detained in Moshannon, and the congressman said he tried to speak with Flores at the facility Thursday. He was told “such requests could not be honored during an unannounced congressional oversight visit,” according to Deluzio’s team.

Cordova-Flores, 36, who was born in Peru, was detained by ICE agents earlier this year after Springdale police pulled him over near his home for allegedly failing to use a turn signal.

Lee, who is still calling for the closure of the detention facility, had tried to enter Moshannon in August 2025 and was turned away. Thursday was Deluzio’s first visit.

According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, members of Congress previously had to submit requests at least seven days ahead of a visit to Moshannon under Trump administration policy.

But in early May, a federal appeals court ruled unanimously that the Trump administration must continue allowing lawmakers to conduct unannounced oversight visits to immigration detention facilities, the New York Times reported.

“Yes, we got a tour, and that’s fine, but there’s a limit,” Deluzio said. “We didn’t have staff who could interpret for us, and there are a significant number of Spanish speakers in this facility. … It limits our ability to really do oversight.

“Much of what we heard from leadership here sounded positive, and yet we heard real complaints, especially from the women … about what they were experiencing.”

ICE did not return TribLive’s request for comment Thursday.