The debate over U.S. immigration detention reached a fever pitch this August, as two high-profile incidents—one in Brooklyn, the other in rural Pennsylvania—cast a harsh spotlight on the conditions, oversight, and accountability of facilities run by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Lawmakers, advocates, and families are demanding answers, as a string of troubling events raises urgent questions about transparency and human rights in America’s sprawling detention system.
On August 7, 2025, outside Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC), a scene unfolded that seemed ripped from a political thriller. Three federal lawmakers—Representatives Adriano Espaillat, Nydia Velázquez, and Daniel Goldman—arrived unannounced to inspect the facility, where around 100 undocumented immigrants are held. According to Fox News, the lawmakers were met not with open doors, but with masked ICE agents who abruptly sealed access points, trapping the legislators between security gates and the building. “Officials closed the gate and disappeared for 20-30 minutes. No one could enter or exit—effectively imprisoning the members,” a spokesperson for Rep. Espaillat confirmed to Fox News. Photographs from the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC) show the lawmakers confined between fencing and the building, with agents standing guard.
Brooklyn’s MDC, once known for housing celebrities like Sean “P. Diddy” Combs and MSNBC’s Al Sharpton, has become a flashpoint since portions were converted into immigrant detention spaces. State Senator Andrew Gounardes warned in July that the facility now holds “over 100 detainees, many without criminal records,” and described the practice as a deliberate “intimidation tactic against immigrant communities.”
This standoff is not an isolated event. According to NYIC and multiple news outlets, similar ICE confrontations have erupted nationwide in recent months. In Newark, New Jersey, a federal lawmaker was arrested while confronting agents at a detention center. In Baltimore, several legislators were denied entry to an ICE processing facility. ICE officials often claim these denials occur when lawmakers lack proper credentials. However, federal law—specifically U.S. Code § 133—permits unannounced congressional inspections of federal detention facilities, a point repeatedly raised by legal experts and immigrant rights groups.
Rep. Goldman, one of the Brooklyn lawmakers, condemned the lockout, warning that detaining non-criminal immigrants in an “overcrowded, understaffed facility” reverses years of progress in detention reform. The NYIC tweeted during the standoff: “Agents refused access to MDC Brooklyn and have now trapped elected officials.”
Advocates and detainee families say that blocking oversight only deepens concerns about what’s happening inside. Reports of inadequate medical care, limited legal access, and prolonged solitary confinement have dogged the facility for months—claims ICE has repeatedly denied. The use of face coverings by agents, ostensibly for safety and confidentiality, has drawn additional ire. Critics argue that such measures erode transparency and make it harder to hold federal officers accountable.
Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, another tragedy was unfolding. On August 5, 2025, Chaofeng Ge, a 32-year-old Chinese citizen, was found hanging and unresponsive in the shower at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center. According to WHYY News, Ge had been in ICE custody for just five days, awaiting a hearing before the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review. He had been arrested earlier in the year on charges of criminal use of a communication facility, unlawful use of a computer, and access device fraud, and was released to ICE after pleading guilty to some charges in July.
The Moshannon Valley facility, operated by private corporation GEO Group Inc. since 2021, is the largest detention center in the Northeast, with a maximum capacity of 1,876 detainees and an average daily population of 1,340 as of late June 2025, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. Advocates say Ge’s death is not the first such tragedy at Moshannon. Frankline Okpu, a Cameroonian citizen, died there in 2023, and three detainees were stabbed in August 2024.
“This most recent death serves as a reminder of what we know. Moshannon should not exist and we want it closed now,” said Erika Guadalupe Núñez, executive director of Juntos, a Philadelphia-based immigrant rights organization, at a press conference. Núñez added, “Detention as a system is cruel and unnecessary and is an extension of the private industrial complex. It’s a system built to profit off of human suffering, and it doesn’t keep our community safe and it tears them apart.”
A 2024 report by Temple University law students and Juntos documented “inhumane, punitive and dangerous conditions” at Moshannon, including physical and psychological mistreatment, barriers to justice, and the use of solitary confinement for minor infractions. Alexandria Iwanenko, an immigration attorney, told WHYY News that one of her clients at Moshannon was denied contact with his attorney, refused water, and was tied up when given food. “There’s human rights violations concerns, obviously, people not having access to food and water,” she said. “There’s due process and legal access concerns, not being able to speak with clients when they are asking to speak to their attorney and then being deported without ever seeing a deportation order.”
ICE maintains that it is “committed to ensuring that all those in its custody reside in safe, secure, and humane environments. Comprehensive medical care is provided from the moment individuals arrive and throughout the entirety of their stay.” John Sobel, vice chairman of the Clearfield County commissioners, expressed sadness at Ge’s death but said, “Their initial findings seem to be that the individual harmed himself, he was not harmed by somebody else or didn’t pass as a result of an accident, or something like that, either.” Sobel also stated that a federal investigation found GEO Group operating within guidelines, and that county officials remain in regular contact with the facility.
Yet, according to ICE’s own Detainee Death Reporting list, Ge was the 14th person to die in ICE custody since the start of fiscal year 2025 in October 2024, and the 11th since the current Trump administration began. Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director at Detention Watch Network, told WHYY News that the number is “very likely an underestimate given ICE’s lack of transparency and reporting.” Ghandehari noted a nationwide surge in reports of “death, medical neglect, overcrowding, lack of food, and rampant transfers that cut people off from their loved ones and support networks, including legal access to legal counsel.”
“Immigration detention, deprivation of freedom, isolation, uncertainty and abysmal conditions, including inadequate medical care and mental health services, are a lethal combination that puts lives in jeopardy,” Ghandehari said. “Trump’s cruel mass detention expansion is exacerbating inhumane conditions that are inherent to the ICE detention system and have been well documented now for decades.”
As the nation grapples with these revelations, calls for reform are growing louder. From the masked standoff in Brooklyn to the tragedy in Pennsylvania, the stories emerging from ICE detention centers are forcing a reckoning over who is held accountable—and at what cost. For lawmakers and advocates alike, the push for transparency, oversight, and humane treatment remains as urgent as ever.