In a secure wing of Abraxas Academy, an unnamed 14-year-old boy waits to be called for an immigration hearing. When that day arrives, he will still be alone. Maybe an interpreter will be there, perhaps an attorney on a video call. If he is lucky, he will have an attorney who cares by his side, someone like Justin Mixon or Aldea. Unaccompanied migrant boys are held at Abraxas in Morgantown, Pa., while they fight deportation cases that advocates say move faster than those of adults. The Pennsylvania Immigration Coalition (PIC) is pressing Gov. Josh Shapiro to issue an emergency removal order to end the placements.
Abraxas began in 1973, and the center’s administration says youth safety is its highest priority, presenting itself as a caring place for troubled teenage boys with therapy, schooling, and family reunification services. Yet numerous lawsuits and complaints target the facility. The record reads like a police report stapled behind a glossy brochure.
In August 2025, the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) awarded Abraxas Alliance a $9.2 million contract to hold up to 30 unaccompanied teenage boys. Since October 2025, migrant boys have lived in a wing of a building that otherwise houses youth sentenced or awaiting trial in juvenile court. State inspectors have recorded at least 15 incidents since 2013 where staff physically mistreated minors. In March 2026, Sen. “This is not a bug; this is a feature,” said Jasmine Rivera, executive director of PIC, a nonprofit that works with 65 immigrant rights organizations, during a briefing for community members and the press. In November 2025, Pennsylvania revoked the license for Abraxas Academy’s secure detention unit. Abraxas appealed and continues operating it.
The coalition, Wyden and Reps. Summer Lee, Madeleine Dean and Chris Deluzio have called for the contract to be canceled. For the boys in Morgantown, Rivera said, the problem was never a lack of information. “It is a political choice.” Governor Shapiro has said the boys are in federal custody, beyond his reach. Still, She, called that incorrect since the state licenses the facility. Closing it, the coalition argues, would force federal officials to move the boys to shelters or foster care. Turning 18 inside detention carries its own danger: on that birthday, she said, the boys are fast-tracked for deportation.
The money trail runs through the GEO Group, a Florida-based private prison company. GEO acquired Abraxas when it bought Cornell Companies in 2010 and sold the operating side to a nonprofit in 2021. It still owns the Morgantown building and leases it to Abraxas. Rivera called the web of shell LLCs and nonprofits “purposely confusing.”
The path to reuniting a child with extended family has become a trap. Rivera said that when ORR must release a child, it schedules the adult sponsor for fingerprinting, and ICE arrests the sponsor at the appointment. “They are using the kids as bait,” she said.
