With the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Pittsburgh’s South Side as a backdrop, immigrant rights advocate Jaime Martinez implored community members Sunday morning to see the humanity in their foreign-born neighbors.
“Dignity is not conditional,” said Martinez, who founded activist group Frontline Dignity last year. “It is not something that can be taken by a uniform or a badge or a locked door.”
He was clad in a blue windbreaker, black shorts with tights underneath and a pair of white Hoka walking shoes that will meet roughly 130 miles of pavement over the next eight days on his journey by foot to Moshannon Valley Processing Center, a massive immigrant detention facility in Clearfield County.
“Every mile is a refusal to accept things as the status quo,” Martinez said.
Around 50 fellow activists and supporters set off with him, though few will complete the full walk. Anyone is welcome to join along the way.
Martinez anticipates reaching Monroeville by the end of Sunday, a 13-mile stretch. He plans on walking 22 miles to Apollo on Monday and, by Tuesday, covering another 24 miles to reach Indiana. Stops after that include Northern Cambria, Loretto, Tyrone, Osceola Mills and Philipsburg, home of the Moshannon Valley Processing Center.
The journey will go through rural Pennsylvania, where support for the Trump administration and its aggressive immigration enforcement tend to be strong. The hope is to connect with people in these communities who take the opposite stance but may be “hidden in fear,” said Carlos Mora, an Erie-based organizer for Pennsylvania United who’s joining Martinez for the next few days.
Martinez offered a message to anyone opposing his efforts.
“You might believe in law and order,” he said. “So do we.
“But if those values come at the cost of our humanity, then we’ve lost the very thing we claim to protect.”
Locked up
With nearly 1,900 beds, the Moshannon Valley Processing Center is ICE’s largest jail in the Northeast. The site is owned and operated by Geo Group, a publicly traded for-profit prison operator based in Florida.
A 2021 agreement between ICE and Clearfield County cleared the way for the complex to be transformed from a Federal Bureau of Prisons facility into one holding immigrant detainees. The contract, which brings a $200,000 annual windfall to the county, expires in September.
The county’s three-member board of commissioners appears to be split on whether to renew.
Groups like Frontline Dignity have called for the facility’s closure, armed with a 2024 report by the Sheller Center for Social Justice at the Temple University Beasley School of Law alleging “punitive, inhumane and dangerous” conditions there.
Martinez’ march will end April 12 outside the facility with a vigil for those held inside.
For now, the detention center remains operational, with some number of Southwestern Pennsylvania residents within its walls. Randy Cordova-Flores, a Peru native who lived in Springdale, is among them.
His sister, Paulette Cordova, spoke Sunday ahead of the march about her brother’s experience at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center. He’s been there since borough police handed him over to ICE after a traffic stop in February. He has no criminal record and a pending asylum case.
An immigration judge declined to hear Cordova-Flores’ case and he must wait months for another hearing, according to Cordova. The family’s legal fees have already reached $25,000.
In the meantime, her brother will likely remain at the Clearfield County complex, uncertain about his future and separated from his family.
“We cannot help him,” she said. “Every time I see him, it’s through glass.”