Vanessa Stine: Close the Moshannon Valley immigration prison, Mr. President

Just over a year ago, Frankline Okpu, a Cameroonian national who was being detained at Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Clearfield County, was found dead in a solitary confinement cell. Okpu was a father and a husband, and his immigration case had just been resolved favorably. He won what’s known as humanitarian immigration protection under the Convention Against Torture. He could stay in the country lawfully and was simply awaiting release. But his untimely and tragic death ended all that.

A year later, the circumstances of Okpu’s death remain cloudy. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has released few details about what caused his death apart from a brief, public report stating that Okpu died of a drug overdose. But this explanation is incomplete: Okpu was placed in solitary confinement several days before he died, and staff are supposed to conduct frequent wellness checks and provide adequate medical care.

This is why the ACLU of Pennsylvania is representing Okpu’s widow in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that seeks records to get more details about how he died in ICE custody. Okpu’s widow — and the public — deserve answers about what happened.

Preventable tragedies like Okpu’s death are exactly why President Joe Biden must take bold action in his last weeks in the White House to dismantle the deportation machine before Donald Trump’s inauguration. The president should also honor his 2020 campaign promise and finally end federal contracts that allow for-profit prison corporations to make billions of dollars from pointless and cruel immigration detention. Unfortunately, his recent actions point in the opposite direction.

Ending unnecessary and cruel immigration detention would help protect the civil rights and physical safety of millions of asylum seekers and other new Americans awaiting a resolution to their immigration cases. At Moshannon Valley, the detention center where Okpu died, people in detention are routinely denied medical care and language services.

In August, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties determined, after reviewing 88 complaints alleging civil rights violations at Moshannon during the last fiscal year, that they would conduct “a multidisciplinary onsite investigation at Moshannon.” This onsight investigation was, in part, in response to a civil rights complaint that the ACLU-PA, Legal Services of New Jersey and the Transnational Legal Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania Carey School of Law filed over inhumane conditions at Moshannon in July.

A DHS investigation into Moshannon is good news, but with weeks to go before Trump’s inauguration, anything short of bold, meaningful action is unlikely to improve the situation.

Trump told us what kind of president he wants to be. And we believe him.

That’s why Biden should announce that he is immediately closing Moshannon Valley Processing Center as an immigration detention center and releasing all people who are detained there back to their families and loved ones.

During the first Trump administration, ACLU-PA opposed many Trump policies that hurt countless innocent people, including the so-called Muslim ban and family separation. We sued the Pennsylvania State Police for racially profiling Latino motorists without any reasonable cause for the purposes of civil immigration enforcement. During the first year of the pandemic, we sued and won the release of medically vulnerable people in immigration detention in Pennsylvania.

The ACLU is again ready to fight against any unlawful and unconstitutional aspects of Trump’s promised deportation campaign.

But Biden should not make it easier for the incoming president to engage in what will surely be an ugly and violent roundup of hundreds of thousands — or even millions — of people. Closing Moshannon Valley Processing Center would be a big step toward thwarting the deportation machine and protecting Pennsylvania families and their loved ones.

Be bold, Mr. President. Close Moshannon today.

Vanessa Stine is the senior staff attorney for immigrant rights at the ACLU of Pennsylvania.