(TNS) — U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, a Pittsburgh-area Democrat, on Monday became the latest congressional Democrat denied entry at a federal immigration detention center.

Lee, on Monday, was denied access to the Moshannon Valley Processing Center, the largest immigration detention center in the Northeast. She had traveled to the Clearfield County detention center along with a human rights attorney to ascertain the living conditions of the 2,000 or so individuals being detained by ICE at the former prison.

During a virtual press conference, Lee, along with Yannick Gill, a senior counsel with Refugee Advocacy, Human Rights First, decried the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement for denying a member of Congress their full and legal oversight duties over a federal immigration agency.

“We’ve also seen violence against members of Congress who have attempted to conduct their legally protected oversight duties,” Lee said. “We waited for over an hour at the gate to be allowed in, but ICE agents, unsurprisingly, denied us entry.”

Instead, Lee said, officials at the Phillipsburg-based center gave her a letter from security informing them they require seven days’ notice for a visit.

“Now, we reminded them that as members of Congress, it is our constitutional right to conduct oversight of federal agencies,” Lee said.

Last year, Congress passed a law that explicitly prohibits DHS from preventing members of Congress from entering any facilities operated by or for DHS, Lee noted.

“Denying us entry is another example of the Trump administration’s executive overreach,” Lee said. “Congress has to be permitted to conduct oversight over immigration detention centers because it is the only way that we know that our neighbors are protected from abuse and to help them to gain access to counsel and a chance at release. Our community deserves to know how people are being treated inside these taxpayer-funded facilities.”

The Trump administration has unilaterally enacted a policy that requires lawmakers to submit a notice of intent to visit a DHS facility seven calendar days in advance.

A privately operated facility, Moshannon has recently made headlines amid the surge of arrests and the detention of immigrants by the Trump administration. Moshannon is fraught with allegations (and lawsuits) around stabbings, sexual violence, and deaths.

The Clearfield County-based facility, formerly a prison, was most recently in the news earlier this month when a Chinese national, who had only been in detention there for about five days, died by suicide.

According to ICE, 14 individuals — both male and female — have died while in detention at its facilities during the 2025 fiscal year, which began in October. The current count does not include the Chinese man who died by suicide at Moshannon earlier this month.

Chaofeng Ge, who was being detained at Moshannon, was pronounced dead by the Clearfield County coroner on Tuesday, Aug. 5. Ge had been in ICE custody for five days and was awaiting an immigration review hearing before the Department of Justice.

Immigration advocates have amped up calls to Clearfield County Commissioners to end a contract with ICE and Geo Group, the private prison group that operates Moshannon.

ICE has increasingly been barring members of Congress from detention facilities.

At least a dozen Democratic lawmakers have been denied entry to federal immigration facilities this year when they showed up to conduct oversight. Lawmakers in July filed lawsuits against the Trump administration in the federal district court for the District of Columbia.

“Detention or incarceration should never end in death,” Gill said. “The death that we heard about earlier this month broke all of our hearts. The conflation and asylum within this nation right now not only goes against our laws, but it goes against our values.”

Gill decried the billions of dollars about to be channeled into ICE operations and detention centers amid little regulation and transparency. The GOP-authored spending and tax bill signed into law by President Donald Trump will allocate around $75 billion over four years to ICE, with an initial $170 billion for overall immigration and border enforcement. This funding will build new detention centers, ICE enforcement and deportation operations, among other things.

“I said it once and it bears repeating,” Gill said. “Seeking asylum is not a crime. Being an immigrant is not a crime. And under no circumstances should someone within the U.S. government’s custody be forced to a death sentence by following the law.”

Gill said he and Lee were trying to ascertain the living conditions and health care given to detainees, as well as access to legal counsel.

Neither Lee nor Gill had updates on the status of the 26 Latino construction workers who were detained and arrested last week in Centre County as they were on their way to a hospital construction work site. It is not clear how many of them – if any – are being detained at Moshannon.

“It speaks to a larger problem with immigration enforcement under the Trump administration,” Gill said. “Everything has happened with some secrecy. We are seeing ICE detention under masks. We are seeing the enforcement happening at churches, at schools, at hospitals, places that were previously seen as neutral zones, places that were seen as sacred. When it comes to trying to figure out where people’s loved ones are taken by these masked assailants, the fact that we don’t know further highlights the problem.”