A small caravan of backpack-clad immigrant rights advocates pushed through Westmoreland County Monday on their way to an ICE detention facility in Clearfield County.
Jaime Martinez, executive director of Pittsburgh-based Frontline Dignity, is making the 8-day, roughly 130-mile journey to Moshannon Valley Processing Center in an effort to draw attention to recent mass detentions of immigrants and in solidarity with the affected communities, he said.
He began the walk Easter morning at ICE’s field office in Pittsburgh’s South Side. He and several others walked nearly 15 miles through Pittsburgh and its eastern suburbs before ending the day at Monroeville United Methodist Church.
Monday’s journey was significantly longer — stretching around 22 miles — and on less hospitable roadways as the walkers headed toward Leechburg.
During a lunch break along Golden Mile Highway in Murrysville, Martinez and around a half-dozen other walkers said locals had generally been supportive of theirs effort, which Martinez likens to a pilgrimage.
“It was a lot of neat moments in the mundane,” Martinez said.
At a coffee shop in Pittsburgh Sunday, he said a supportive stranger bought the group breakfast, which caused Martinez to pay for the person behind him in line, triggering a pay-it-forward chain at the shop.
Many motorists also honked their horns or waved in support of the group.
Still, as the walkers progressed down busy Golden Mile Highway, Martinez and others had a brief, tense conversation with a passing motorist, who said immigrants should “come the right way.”
The man, who did not identify himself, and Martinez both agreed that it should be easier to obtain U.S. citizenship before the man drove away.
“We’ve got to do a lot of healing, and it starts with these small-scale interactions,” Martinez said after the incident.
A devout Catholic, Martinez said the journey to Moshannon was partly inspired by his time spent on Spain’s famed Camino de Santiago — or Way of St. James — which takes pilgrims to the tomb of the apostle St. James.
A scallop shell, an iconic symbol of the pilgrimage, hung from Martinez’s pack along with a plush Mr. Rogers doll.
“When we enter into this in a spirit of pilgrimage, there’s also a transformation of self and a transformation of others we interact with,” he said.
Don Kretschmann, a 76-year-old Beaver County farmer, joined Martinez for Monday’s leg of the journey.
He said he was inspired by his warm interactions in foreign countries, especially Mexico, and his past involvement in the anti-Vietnam War movement in the early 1970s.
“It actually worked,” Kretschmann said. “Things changed.”
Also a veteran of the Camino, Kretschmann pointed out livestock as the caravan marched down Golden Mile Highway.
Kretschmann wore a placard reading: “Dignity is treating people as an end in themselves not as a means to an end,” a nod to philosopher Immanuel Kant’s famous “categorical imperative.”
Rosalyn Tosh, a sophomore at Carnegie Mellon, pushed her bike along the road with her fellow walkers.
She said she plans to walk the whole journey before biking back to Pittsburgh over the course of two or three days.
A transgender woman, Tosh carried a pride flag in her pack as she walked. She said she was marching in solidarity with the families of those detained at Moshannon, many of whom have been forced to make the same journey to see their relatives.
“It’s such an important issue,” Tosh said.
Carlos Mora, 29, also said he plans to join for almost the entire journey.
Mora, 29, is an organizer with Erie County United, which recently helped pressure Erie County council to end its agreement with ICE to hold detainees at the Erie County Jail.
Now, he and the group have their sights set on Moshannon.
“We’re doing the same fight but in different cities,” Mora said.
By Tuesday morning, the group will still be facing nearly 100 miles to Moshannon with stops in Indiana, North Cambria, Loretto, Tyrone and Osceola Mills planned throughout this week.
They’ll do it with the help of Rebecca Donadee, who has handled some of the logistics for the journey.
Donadee, who will make the journey via car, helps plan and scout routes and offers items like snacks and water to marchers during breaks, she said.
The walk has involved two to three weeks of planning, Martinez said. About 30 to 40 people across the state, Donadee said, are involved in helping plan the 8-day quest.
On Monday, the group will stay in a Leechburg church, followed by a farm near Indiana and a home in North Cambria, Martinez said. He said the group is still working out the details at future stops.
By Monday afternoon, a Frontline Dignity fundraiser had already yielded more than $25,000 of its $133,000 goal — $1,000 for each of the expected miles of the route.
Once the group arrives at Moshannon, Martinez said, they plan to hold a vigil outside the facility in honor of those detained.
Moshannon Valley Processing Center has operated as an ICE detention facility since 2021.
It’s the largest ICE facility in the Northeast.
It has been averaging 1,650 detainees, with a 50-day average stay, Warden Leonard Oddo previously told TribLive. The facility has never housed more than 1,800 detainees at one time. Its capacity is 1,876.