HUNTER SMITH/THE EXPRESS The Clinton County Correctional Facility is pictured. In recent months, the prison’s population has seen its contingent of ICE detainees swell.

McELHATTAN — Though the Clinton County Correctional Facility’s federal detention contract is primarily with the U.S. Marshals Service, people in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody accounted for more than 95 percent of federal detainees held there in 2025, according to figures provided by the facility’s warden.

The correctional facility houses federal detainees under an intergovernmental agreement with the U.S. Marshals Service that also authorizes U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to use the McElhattan prison. Although both agencies house their detainees at the facility, ICE has become its dominant user, accounting for 89 percent of federal detentions since 2021.

The figures also reveal the financial importance of the arrangement for the county jail, which generates an average of $2.5 million annually and covers about 37 percent of the facility’s expenditures.

While exact numbers have fluctuated in recent years, ICE has remained the primary source of federal detainees at the facility since at least 2021. Over the past five years, ICE’s detainees accounted for between 79 and 95 percent of those held under the agreement.

In 2025, the jail housed 825 ICE detainees, the most since 2021, when it held 658. That number marks a significant increase from 2022 to 2024, when between 315 and 408 people were held by ICE at the correctional facility. Last year’s figure also represents the highest share of federal detainees held by the agency since 2021.

As of March 16, 2026, 84 detainees were held for ICE at the facility, compared to 14 for the U.S. Marshals Service, the agency the agreement was primarily established with.

The intergovernmental agreement, provided to The Express through a Right-to-Know Request, denotes the facility as having 150 male and 25 female beds available to the federal government, allowing it to house up to 175 detainees at a given time.

Warden Angela Hoover noted, however, that “(The Clinton County Correctional Facility) maintains the authority to limit this capacity daily based on bed availability, which depends on the number of county detainees committed to the facility at any given time.”

As of Jan. 22, 2026, ICE reported an annualized average of 92 detainees at the facility per day. Using an interval average, the number on that date was likely closer to 99, according to a Relevant Research report on the facility.

“All individuals currently held are classified as non-criminal detainees,” Hoover said. “The majority of these ICE holds are transfers from criminal custody. Upon completion of their criminal sentences, individuals are transferred to our facility under an I-203 detention order.”

I-203 orders are used to initiate or continue detention during immigration investigation or removal proceedings.

Hoover confirmed that everyone in custody at the Clinton County Correctional Facility are adults and classified in accordance with the 2019 National Detention Standards, which ensure that detainees are treated humanely; protected from harm; provided appropriate medical and mental health care; and receive the rights and protections to which they are entitled.

The ICE Office of Detention Oversight (ODO) inspects the facility annually for compliance with those standards, and did so most recently in January 2025.

The Clinton County Correctional Facility, which opened in June 1991, is owned by the county and operated by the Clinton County Prison Board. ICE’s Office of Enforcement and Removal Operations began housing detainees at the facility in January 2004 under the oversight of its Field Office Director in Philadelphia.

ICE, as well as the Board of Prisons, is an authorized user of the facility under an intergovernmental agreement with the U.S. Marshals Service, and has been for nearly the agency’s entire history.

Under the agreement, the facility receives $82 per day for each federal detainee and $35 per hour for transportation services they may require. Those rates were established in October 2021, when then-Chairman of the Board of Commissioners Miles Kessinger most recently reauthorized the agreement.

Over the past five years, the Clinton County Correctional Facility has averaged $2.5 million annually in revenue from the detention program, according to Hoover.

The arrangement reflects a broader system in which federal agencies rely on local jails operating under existing agreements, according to experts, allowing for the rapid expansion of detention space without the need to negotiate new contracts. The structure also offers local governments a relatively straightforward way to generate revenue while enabling agencies such as ICE to scale detention capacity.

That structure is not unique to Clinton County. Similar agreements are used across Pennsylvania and the country, where most ICE detention occurs not in dedicated federal facilities, but in local jails and privately operated prisons that lease bed space to federal authorities.

Though either party in Clinton County’s agreement may terminate it with 30 days’ written notice, Hoover said the county has no record of considering changes to or termination of the agreement.

The Express reached out to the Clinton County Commissioners for comment on their thoughts on the arrangement but received no response by press time Friday.