Eritrean imam dies in ICE custody as detainee deaths hit 20-year high
(RNS) — Fouad Saeed Abdulkadir is one of four people who died in immigration detention over a four-day period this month, raising alarm among advocates about deteriorating conditions at immigration facilities.
FILE - People demonstrate near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Field Office, Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)
Ulaa Kuziez
December 21, 2025
RNS
(RNS) — Fouad Saeed Abdulkadir, an Eritrean imam from Ohio and a 46-year-old green card holder, died while in immigration custody on Dec. 14 at a private detention facility in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Abdulkadir is one of four people who died while in immigration detention during a four-day period this month, raising alarm among advocates and some members of Congress about deteriorating conditions at immigrant detention facilities.
“Imam Fouad’s death underscores the deadly consequences of a detention system that routinely fails to provide adequate medical care, transparency, and basic human dignity,” the Council on American Islamic Relations’ Ohio and Pennsylvania chapters said in a statement.
The recent deaths bring the total number of detainees who have died to a two-decade high, with 30 deaths in ICE custody in 2025, the highest number since 2004, when 32 detainees died.
Abdulkadir complained of chest pains prior to his death and received CPR after he was transported to a hospital, according to an ICE news release. The cause of death is under investigation.
“Imam Fouad’s death is not an isolated tragedy, it is the predictable outcome of a violent detention system that continues to cage people for profit and punishment,” wrote the Shutdown Detention Campaign, an advocacy group calling for the closing of detention centers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
RELATED: New Jersey religious activists call for investigation after ICE detainee’s death
Aerial view of the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Philipsburg, PA. (Image courtesy Google Earth)
Abdulkadir was held at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center for 215 days awaiting a hearing before immigration court. His death comes after Chinese immigrant Chaofeng Ge was found hanging in a shower stall with his hands and legs tied behind his back in August at the same facility. Frankline Bate Okpu, an immigrant from Cameroon, also died at Moshannon Valley Processing Center in 2023.
CAIR-Philadelphia executive director Ahmet Selim Tekelioglu called on Clearfield County Commissioners to shut down the detention center and to end their contracts with ICE and the private prison company GEO Group.
“It’s clear this facility is failing at its most basic duty: preserving human life,” Tekelioglu wrote in a Dec. 19 statement.
In a statement reporting Abdulkadir’s death, ICE said it is “committed to ensuring that all those in custody reside in safe, secure and humane environments.”
Abdulkadir was the spiritual leader of the Islamic Center of Northeast Ohio from summer of 2014 to approximately May of 2016.
Fouad Saeed Abdulkadir in a video from 2014. (Video screen grab)
While serving a 21-month sentence in a low-security federal prison for wire fraud, immigration enforcement officers issued a detainer for Abdulkadir and transferred him to Moshannon Valley Processing Center in July 2024, according to an ICE release.
RELATED: ICE detains Imam of African mosque housing migrants, marking first NYC clergy arrest
Abdulkadir was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and was a citizen of Eritrea. Janazah, or funeral, prayers were held on Dec. 19 before his burial at Interment West Park Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio, according to a post from Masjid Alomary. A Go FundMe for Abdulkadir’s funeral costs raised $13,000 as of Saturday.
The other three detainees who died between Dec. 12 – 15 were Jean Wilson Brutus, a 41-year-old Haitian immigrant held at Delaney Hall Detention Facility in Newark; Nenko Stanev Gantchev, a 56-year-old Bulgarian immigrant who died at the North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, Michigan; Delvin Francisco Rodriguez, a 39-year-old Nicaraguan detainee in Natchez, Mississippi.
(RNS) — Fouad Saeed Abdulkadir is one of four people who died in immigration detention over a four-day period this month, raising alarm among advocates about deteriorating conditions at immigration facilities.
FILE - People demonstrate near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Field Office, Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)
Ulaa Kuziez
December 21, 2025
RNS
(RNS) — Fouad Saeed Abdulkadir, an Eritrean imam from Ohio and a 46-year-old green card holder, died while in immigration custody on Dec. 14 at a private detention facility in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Abdulkadir is one of four people who died while in immigration detention during a four-day period this month, raising alarm among advocates and some members of Congress about deteriorating conditions at immigrant detention facilities.
“Imam Fouad’s death underscores the deadly consequences of a detention system that routinely fails to provide adequate medical care, transparency, and basic human dignity,” the Council on American Islamic Relations’ Ohio and Pennsylvania chapters said in a statement.
The recent deaths bring the total number of detainees who have died to a two-decade high, with 30 deaths in ICE custody in 2025, the highest number since 2004, when 32 detainees died.
Abdulkadir complained of chest pains prior to his death and received CPR after he was transported to a hospital, according to an ICE news release. The cause of death is under investigation.
“Imam Fouad’s death is not an isolated tragedy, it is the predictable outcome of a violent detention system that continues to cage people for profit and punishment,” wrote the Shutdown Detention Campaign, an advocacy group calling for the closing of detention centers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
RELATED: New Jersey religious activists call for investigation after ICE detainee’s death
Aerial view of the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Philipsburg, PA. (Image courtesy Google Earth)
Abdulkadir was held at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center for 215 days awaiting a hearing before immigration court. His death comes after Chinese immigrant Chaofeng Ge was found hanging in a shower stall with his hands and legs tied behind his back in August at the same facility. Frankline Bate Okpu, an immigrant from Cameroon, also died at Moshannon Valley Processing Center in 2023.
CAIR-Philadelphia executive director Ahmet Selim Tekelioglu called on Clearfield County Commissioners to shut down the detention center and to end their contracts with ICE and the private prison company GEO Group.
“It’s clear this facility is failing at its most basic duty: preserving human life,” Tekelioglu wrote in a Dec. 19 statement.
In a statement reporting Abdulkadir’s death, ICE said it is “committed to ensuring that all those in custody reside in safe, secure and humane environments.”
Abdulkadir was the spiritual leader of the Islamic Center of Northeast Ohio from summer of 2014 to approximately May of 2016.
Fouad Saeed Abdulkadir in a video from 2014. (Video screen grab)
While serving a 21-month sentence in a low-security federal prison for wire fraud, immigration enforcement officers issued a detainer for Abdulkadir and transferred him to Moshannon Valley Processing Center in July 2024, according to an ICE release.
RELATED: ICE detains Imam of African mosque housing migrants, marking first NYC clergy arrest
Abdulkadir was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and was a citizen of Eritrea. Janazah, or funeral, prayers were held on Dec. 19 before his burial at Interment West Park Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio, according to a post from Masjid Alomary. A Go FundMe for Abdulkadir’s funeral costs raised $13,000 as of Saturday.
The other three detainees who died between Dec. 12 – 15 were Jean Wilson Brutus, a 41-year-old Haitian immigrant held at Delaney Hall Detention Facility in Newark; Nenko Stanev Gantchev, a 56-year-old Bulgarian immigrant who died at the North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, Michigan; Delvin Francisco Rodriguez, a 39-year-old Nicaraguan detainee in Natchez, Mississippi.
Bret Pallotto
Fri, December 19, 2025
The sign for the GEO Group’s Moshannon Valley Processing Center, an immigration detention facility, in Clearfield County.
A man died Sunday at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center, marking the second death at the privately owned immigration detention facility this year and the third in the past four.
Fouad Saeed Abdulkadir, 46, from the African country of Eritrea, died about 3:21 a.m. Sunday in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody after experiencing what the federal agency described in a news release as medical distress.
Hours after ICE announced his death Friday, the Shut Down Detention Campaign renewed calls for Clearfield County’s governing body to end its contracts with ICE and the company that operates the facility.
“Imam Fouad’s death is not an isolated tragedy, it is the predictable outcome of a violent detention system that continues to cage people for profit and punishment,” the group said in a written statement. “... No amount of ‘oversight’ can fix a profit-driven system that treats human beings as disposable, a system designed to cage people.”
The cause of Abdulkadir’s death is being investigated. Messages left Friday afternoon with state police at Clearfield and the Clearfield County Coroner’s Office were not immediately returned. He was a father of four.
ICE said medical staff transported him to the medical department, contacted local emergency medical services and began CPR after Abdulkadir complained of chest pain. EMS personnel pronounced him dead after arriving at the facility that’s about three miles from Philipsburg.
He was in ICE custody for about seven months and was waiting for a hearing with the Justice Department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review.
Immigration rights advocates have long called for the closure of the Moshannon Valley Processing Center, the largest federal immigration detention center in the Northeast. It is owned and operated by the Florida-based GEO Group.
Chaofeng Ge, a 32-year-old Chinese citizen and New York City resident, died by suicide in August. He was found hanging by his neck in a shower stall and his family said his hands were bound behind his back.
Frankline Okpu, a 37-year-old Cameroonian national, died in December 2023 of ecstasy toxicity combined with other three other significant conditions. His death was ruled accidental. The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania said he was found unresponsive while in solitary confinement.
Each death resulted in a lawsuit seeking greater transparency from ICE. A 59-page report also detailed what it described as “punitive, inhumane, and dangerous” conditions at the facility.
Abdulkadir was a native of Saudia Arabia. ICE said he adjusted his status in the U.S. to a lawful permanent resident in April 2018, though records showed he had no claim to citizenship. The Shut Down Detention Campaign said he was a green-card holder.
He was convicted by a jury in December 2023 of wire fraud and theft of public money. He was accused of fraudulently obtaining more than $80,000 in benefits from three public assistance programs. Abdulkadir had appealed his conviction.
U.S. District Judge Sara Lioi sentenced him in April 2024 to one year and nine months in federal prison, as well as three years of supervised release. He was also ordered to pay more than $80,000 in restitution.
The judge said he “manipulated and controlled others for selfish financial gain,” Cleveland.com reported. A federal prosecutor described him as a “conman.” Nearly four dozen people wrote letters to Lioi seeking leniency.
ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations took him into custody in July 2024 and transported him to the Moshannon Valley Processing Center.
The Shut Down Detention Campaign said Abdulkadir was an imam and former leader at the Islamic Center of Northeast Ohio. A GoFundMe — which has raised more than $9,000 to cover his funeral expenses — described him as a “gentle guide who illuminated our paths.”
The page said he died while “unjustly incarcerated, after pleading for medical care for over a year.”
“He spent his life selflessly caring for others, nurturing our children with the wisdom of the Quran, healing family rifts, and offering kindness to everyone he met,” the page said. “His boundless generosity touched countless souls, and the space he leaves behind feels immeasurably quiet and deep.”
A record average of 1,600 people were at the detention center as of Nov. 28, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data distribution organization founded at Syracuse University. The facility has a capacity of 1,876.
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