A federal death review reveals falsified records after a man died in ICE custody, raising urgent questions about private prison accountability and immigrant safety.
Staff at a for-profit Pennsylvania immigrant prison serially falsified detention records about a man who died in 2023, according to a federal death review obtained exclusively by The Intercept earlier this month.
Despite these findings, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined to punish the facility’s politically connected operator, GEO Group. Instead, records show the agency gave GEO even more money to run the facility after the man died: $4 million in additional funds, just three months after the death review was completed. After an April 2024 visit at the facility, ICE’s acting director called GEO a “valued partner.”
Frankline Okpu died in solitary confinement at GEO Group’s Moshannon Valley ICE Processing Center in Clearfield County on December 6, 2023. According to the detainee death report, two days before his death, staff sent the 37-year-old Cameroonian father of three to solitary confinement following an altercation with a guard in which he allegedly swallowed an unknown substance they believed to contain “k2,” a synthetic form of cannabis, “mixed with a tranquilizer.”
A physician who treated Okpu upon his placement in segregation instructed facility staff to take him to the emergency department. According to GEO, Okpu refused informed consent for this course of treatment; the doctor ordered GEO to house him in the facility’s infirmary for observation. GEO staff claim Okpu refused this course of treatment, too. The provider ordered prison staff to conduct 15-minute visual checks to ensure his safety.
But records show that did not always happen before Okpu died, according to ICE’s death review.
Surveillance footage revealed 94 of 219 required visual inspections (42 percent) did not occur as ordered. In 23 instances, GEO staff recorded checks that never occurred at all. In another 33, staff logged visual inspections without looking in the cell window to personally observe Okpu. And in 38 logged events, the checks staff claimed to perform every 15 minutes occurred outside that required timeframe.
Federal prosecutors have previously indicted GEO staff for falsifying visual inspection logs during the period preceding an incarcerated person’s death in custody.
The Intercept sought comment and posed a series of detailed questions to ICE and GEO. An ICE spokesperson said the agency was unable to provide a response by deadline, citing “the blizzard in the Northeast.” GEO Group did not respond.
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