SPOTLIGHT PA: PA County Jails Earn Millions of Dollars Detaining Immigrants for ICE

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By Kate Huangpu and Danielle Ohl of Spotlight PA

HARRISBURG — A group of Pennsylvania counties has billed the federal government more than $21 million in recent years to detain immigrants in their jails, a first-of-its-kind review by Spotlight PA has found.

While these agreements predate the second Trump administration by years or even decades, they are receiving new attention as the president executes a mass deportation campaign that relies heavily on local partners.

They also highlight how counties in Pennsylvania already cooperate with ICE and other federal agencies to detain immigrants. Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security purchased two Pennsylvania warehouses to turn them into detention centers capable of holding 9,000 people collectively.

In those cases, local and county lawmakers say they were blindsided by the planned facilities, which they have limited power to block. The detention agreements involving jails that Spotlight PA has identified require the backing of elected county leaders, prison oversight boards, or both.

Five county jails have or recently had agreements with federal immigration enforcement agencies to hold people in their jails, sometimes for months, in exchange for significant fees, Spotlight PA found.

Clinton, Erie, Franklin, and Pike Counties collectively charged more than $21 million for detention in 2024 and 2025, invoices obtained by Spotlight PA show. A fifth county, Cambria, has a similar detention arrangement, according to federal records and a county official — but denied Spotlight PA’s September 2025 request seeking payment information because ICE did not start sending detainees to its jail until later in the month.

Local government officials in favor of the agreements told Spotlight PA that the revenue generated supports services such as the county jail or general fund expenses.

“You’re always going to have pushback one way or another, but we haven’t really experienced it to this point,” Cambria County Commissioner Scott Hunt told Spotlight PA in early March. “This is a relationship that has gone back many years.

“So I realize that emotions are kind of flared now, but this is something we’ve been a part of for years,” he added, “and I don’t see a reason why it wouldn’t continue.”

At least one county leader concerned about ICE’s actions nationally told Spotlight PA the payments have become a crucial source of income that would take careful study and planning to replace.

But at a time when ICE and other federal immigration agencies face scrutiny for aggressive and sometimes deadly tactics during sweeping enforcement operations, Pennsylvanians have pushed back against local government collaboration.

During a February meeting of the Erie County Council, dozens testified for or against the county jail’s contract to hold people for federal immigration agencies.

“We believe that participating in any way in the enhanced enforcement is immoral,” said Sister Anne McCarthy with the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, a monastery that has vocally opposed local cooperation with Trump’s nationwide immigration crackdown.

Others at the meeting asked the county council to keep the agreement intact.

Federal agents won’t stop enforcing the law just because Erie County stops holding people, they argued.

Ending the agreement could draw the ire of the president, one speaker speculated. Another suggested ending local detention would increase the number of people being sent to other jails hundreds of miles away.

And multiple speakers asked: What about the money the county stands to lose?

“ICE will find a different location to house their detainees,” said Fred Petrini, a Wesleyville resident and borough council member. “We will just be out a half a million dollars in funds that could help the county with expenses.”

Spotlight PA sent public records requests to more than 30 counties for invoices showing payments in exchange for arresting, detaining, holding, or processing people for ICE. The news organization also reviewed federal detention data.

From those records, Spotlight PA identified five counties that participated in intergovernmental service agreements with the federal government. Clearfield County has a different type of agreement that allows it to collect an administrative fee for acting as a middleman, passing money between ICE and a private prison contractor.

Spotlight PA then sent questions and findings to officials in all five counties. All counties responded either via email or over the phone.

How do these agreements work?

The five Pennsylvania counties that detained immigrants for the federal government in 2024 and 2025 did so through contracts with either the U.S. Marshals Service, which allows for the detention of any federal prisoner, or with ICE directly.

Some of the agreements go back decades.

These agreements are different from traditional detainer requests, which ICE sends to local jails when a person the agency seeks to deport is incarcerated on criminal charges. When jails honor detainer requests, they expect federal officers to pick the person up within a few days.

The detention agreements also differ from contracts under section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which delegates certain functions to local law enforcement.

Instead, these agreements allow county jails to operate as detention centers, similar to the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Clearfield County — a privately operated facility and one of the largest of its kind in the country.

Under the agreements, a federal immigration agent or deputized local officer can arrest an immigrant and detain them at the county jail during the course of their immigration proceedings, even if the jail is miles away from the site of arrest.

Some people get transferred to these jails from another criminal facility because they have been charged with a crime and immigration enforcement is now underway to remove them from the country, said Bridget Cambria, a Berks County immigration attorney.

But many people detained by ICE have not been convicted or even charged with a crime, according to national data.

Rather, Cambria said, they have been apprehended by ICE in public, “whether it’s out on the street, at a home, at work, at a check-in,” and brought to the jail because “these are the bed spaces that immigration has throughout the state of Pennsylvania.”

“The confinement is deemed civil,” she said, “but it’s being conducted in a criminal facility.”

There is no limit to the amount of time an immigrant can spend in detention, the attorney added.

People facing alleged civil immigration violations do not have the constitutional right to an attorney that criminal defendants do, Cambria said. Immigrants can sit for months, if not years, if they choose to contest their case. Others choose to give up their case and accept removal from the country rather than face detention, she said.

Records show the number of people that Pennsylvania counties held for ICE increased from 2024 to 2025, which includes the last year of Joe Biden’s presidency and the first year of Trump’s.

In Clinton County, the total number of people held each month almost doubled, jumping from 80 people in January 2024 to 157 in December 2025.

Officials from Cambria and Franklin County jails told Spotlight PA that civil detainees are held separately from people incarcerated for criminal charges. Officials from Pike and Clinton County jails told Spotlight PA that immigrants are intermingled in accordance with federal standards that specify how civil detainees should be classified and housed in criminal facilities, among other health and safety requirements. In Erie, ICE detainees were normally kept in one “specific unit,” a county official told Spotlight PA.

Both Clinton and Franklin Counties specified that the increased number of detainees has not significantly affected jail operations.

Records obtained by Spotlight PA show the four counties that provided documents filed monthly invoices with the federal government for reimbursement — the most recent rates ranged from $82 to $120 per person per day. Some of these jails also filed reimbursements for services beyond the per diem rate, including medical care, transportation, video court, calls, and kosher meals.

Pike County has added additional rooms to accommodate an increase in video court hearings and video visits with attorneys, according to Warden Craig Lowe.

Lowe added they have not increased their staffing plan or exceeded maximum capacity but the county has “experienced a multitude of different languages and purchased handheld translating devices to assist our staff in communicating with” detainees.

“Our staff also has access to language services to assist them with any translating issues that may arise,” Lowe said.

What do counties get out of this?

County officials who spoke with Spotlight PA said in some cases the funding goes beyond a simple fee-for-service; it has become revenue they rely on.

There’s a lot of money at stake.

York County also had an intergovernmental service agreement with ICE until 2021, when the federal agency ended the contract after months of unsuccessful negotiation. The county earned $18.4 million in 2020 from the agreement, according to the York Daily Record.

Of the five counties, Pike made the most from its relationship with ICE. The county received more than $16 million for 2024 and 2025. Over the course of that time period, Pike charged ICE for more than 128,000 days.

Clinton County received the next highest amount, more than $4.6 million over the two years.

Erie and Franklin Counties held relatively fewer people, though both also experienced an influx in 2025. They made close to $600,000 and $14,000 from the partnership, respectively.

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A no trespassing sign translated to spanish hangs on the fence outside Erie County Prison on Monday, March 30, 2026. (Joed Viera for Spotlight PA)

Cambria County said it had no documents when it responded to Spotlight PA’s initial records request. A later interview with Commissioner Scott Hunt revealed the county has a longstanding agreement with the Marshals dating back to the mid-’90s but ICE had only asked the county to hold people starting in September 2025.

Hunt did not disclose how much money the county made, or how many people the jail held, but said collaboration with federal enforcement is a revenue source.

Christa Caceres, one of Pike County’s three commissioners, said that while she’s concerned about ICE’s actions nationally, she currently supports its agreement with the county. She attributed that support to how the county runs the prison, saying that the jail has no ICE agents overseeing its inmates.

Another reason, she said, is that “the county has relied upon this additional revenue for decades,” and that it would take years to unwind in a responsible manner.

She has asked her fellow commissioners to approve a study that would examine the financial impact if the county or ICE ended the agreement.

“ICE could come in tomorrow and say, you know, we’re going to invest more in these detention centers that we’re transforming from warehouses,” Caceres told Spotlight PA, referencing the agency’s recent purchases.

As scrutiny increases on ICE’s actions, county prison boards face increased pressure from their constituents to end all forms of collaboration with the federal agency. In the case of these intergovernmental service agreements, county leaders have the ability to renew or end them.

Franklin County’s agreement is set to expire in May. Pike County’s expired at the end of February, but it agreed to a 30-day extension to negotiate a new one.

Jasmine Rivera, the executive director of advocacy group the Pennsylvania Immigration Coalition, noted that counties are in a particularly precarious financial position at the moment due to federal cuts to food assistance and health care programs. Many of those cuts will be felt locally.

But Rivera still pushed counties to reject working with ICE, saying that the fear and chaos caused by federal agents also negatively impacts local communities.

“I acknowledge that it is hard, it is not easy,” Rivera said of pulling out of these agreements. “But just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it’s not worth pursuing.”

In Erie, McCarthy and other advocates spoke for hours against continued cooperation and prevailed. “It’s safer for the community to not have any participation from the county in the enhanced enforcement,” McCarthy told Spotlight PA.

The county council voted in late February to amend its decades-old agreement with the U.S. Marshals Service, which allowed the county jail to hold federal prisoners, to exclude detaining people for ICE. County Executive Christina Vogel was negotiating with the Marshals to revise the contract, county council members said at the meeting.

“While we might be able to trust the local people in our own system,” McCarthy said at the meeting, pausing.

“I don’t know that we can trust ICE,” she continued, eliciting applause.

“Why would we believe that they would follow any contract, that they would follow their word?”

As of late March, the county says it no longer has any ICE detainees.

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Image: Sister Anne McCarthy with the Benedictine Sisters of Erie looks through her signs protesting President Donald Trump’s nationwide immigration crackdown. (Joed Viera / For Spotlight PA)