When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reported Chinese immigrant Chaofeng Ge’s death in custody in western Pennsylvania on Aug. 6, it said he was found the day before, hanging in a shower stall with a cloth tied around his neck. It made no mention of additional bindings that were on hands and feet.
But on Wednesday, Chaofeng’s family in Queens filed a lawsuit in Manhattan federal court to obtain records that may explain why he was found with his hands and feet bound.
David Rankin, an attorney representing Ge’s older brother, Yanfeng Ge, said the additional details came from an autopsy that the Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, coroner conducted. Chaofeng’s death certificate lists suicide by hanging as the cause of death, but the autopsy gave no clear explanation of how this was possible, he said.
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Chaofeng, a 32-year-old Flushing resident, had been in the Moshannon Valley Processing Center for four days. ICE was holding him following his completion of a 6- to 12-month sentence for credit card fraud.
He was one of many New Yorkers to end up in the Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, lockup that the GEO Group runs. He is also one of 15 immigrants to have died while in ICE custody during the second Trump administration.
Data from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the Justice Department unit that runs the immigration courts, shows that ICE has been transferring greater numbers of detainees from New York to Moshannon, especially those arrested in the agency’s sweeps through 26 Federal Plaza. From 2022 to 2025, the number of detainees transferred increased from 22 to 225, a roughly tenfold increase.
Advocacy groups have campaigned to shut down the facility, a former federal prison that is now the largest immigration jail in the northeast. Moshannon is 259 miles west of New York’s detainee court on Varick Street.
A 2024 report from Temple University concluded that Moshannon’s detainees, who reported being “physically and emotionally isolated,” also cited “physical and psychological abuse by staff, ethnic, racial, and religious discrimination, and medical neglect in the facility, while facing barriers to justice.”
At a news conference in Foley Square, Yanfeng and his attorney said Chaofeng’s isolation was heightened by the Moshannon facility’s lack of a Mandarin translator.
“We’re not talking about an obscure African language. This is Mandarin, one of the most spoken languages on this planet,” Rankin said. “Yes, Moshannon had no ability to communicate with him. How possibly could he be receiving care if he can’t talk to anyone. It’s an absolute failure […] that Mr. Ge was isolated and in a situation of such mental distress that he took his own life.” He later added that this was based on “interviews with people who were there.”
The GEO Group did not respond to Documented’s email seeking comment. ICE didn’t address the Ge family’s allegations, but responded in a statement that “All in-custody deaths are tragic, taken seriously, and are thoroughly investigated by law enforcement.”
When ICE disclosed Ge’s death (as required by law), its release stated that a licensed practical nurse had taken Ge’s medical history with the aid of a Mandarin interpreter during his intake assessment. The agency said it had “documented his denial of any past medical or mental health condition, denial of medication usage, and released him into the general population.”
According to the lawsuit, ICE failed to respond to a Sept. 9 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed on behalf of Yanfeng, Chaofeng’s only other relative in the U.S. According to attorney Rankin the agency has “said nothing to the family.”
“There’s still so much unknown about the circumstances of his death,” Yanfeng said at the news conference, speaking Mandarin through a translator. “That deepens our determination.”
ICE said it had arrested Chaofeng on July 31 based on a detainer filed with the Dauphin County Prison in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He was being released from his sentence related to credit card fraud.
Yanfeng said his brother’s great flaw was being too trusting.
“It made him vulnerable to manipulation,” he said. “That is how he got into trouble and how he ended up in that terrible place.” He added: “Regardless of what he had done […] he did not deserve to die.”
