Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “Activist challenges immigration crackdown: ‘Is this who you want to be?'”

Frontline Dignity was featured in the following Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article, “Activist challenges immigration crackdown: ‘Is this who you want to be?‘”

From the article:

On a day marking resurrection, some three dozen immigration activists gathered Easter Sunday to bury intolerance on a rainy South Side sidewalk where yellow flower petals had been scattered.

Frontline Dignity, a new Pittsburgh-based immigration rights advocacy group, held a news conference to launch an eight-day walk to the Moshannon Valley Processing Center near Philipsburg in Clearfield County, which is the largest detention center of its kind in the Northeast.

Frontline founder Jaime Martinez, 23, will lead the 120-mile walk, which is part fundraising effort, part protest against the ongoing mass deportation campaign spearheaded by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a federal law enforcement agency that is part of the Department of Homeland Security.

“On the day of resurrection, we rise to defend human dignity as the world tries to bury it,” Mr. Martinez said. “We are told this is normal.

“As you walk, ask yourselves, ‘Is this who you want to be?’ ”

The walk started from ICE offices on Sidney Street and will end at the 1,878-bed Moshannon Valley Processing Center, which is operated by ICE under contract with Geo Group, a publicly traded prison company based in Boca Raton, Fla.

A prayer vigil and demonstration to protest conditions inside the center were planned at Moshannon Valley with their anticipated arrival April 12. Two ICE detainees died in custody there last year.

In a December Fox News interview, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said the administration sought to reverse a rising tide of immigration, which started in 1965 and constituted the “single largest experiment on a society, on a civilization ever conducted in human history.”

Multiple reports indicate the government’s goal is to arrest 3,000 migrants without documentation every day — seven times the number arrested during the final year of the Biden presidency.

However, ICE arrests under President Donald Trump have not reached 3,000 a day.

ICE said it plans to spend $38.3 billion on new detention centers by October to absorb the increasing arrests, which was detailed in an agency memo sent to the governor of New Hampshire in February. In campaign speeches, Trump often said the people taken into custody would be the “worst of the worst,” such as rapists, killers and other criminals.

But people without criminal records are sometimes being targeted in the mass roundup as well, speakers said on Sunday.

Also at the news conference, Paulette Cordova Pacheco said her brother, Randy Cordova Flores, was among the innocent victims of the government’s dragnet. Mr. Cordova Flores, a landscaper and Uber driver, was picked up by ICE after a February traffic stop in Springdale, where he lived.

Mr. Cordova Flores, who his sister said had no criminal record and was awaiting action on an asylum petition, was taken to Moshannon Valley, where he remains. He has two children, ages 12 and 9, Ms. Cordova Pacheco said.

“Everyone is human,” she said. “Everyone must have empathy. This is not a criminal case.”

The family has spent $25,000 in legal fees trying to free Mr. Cordova Flores, she said. A lawsuit filed by the family March 3 against David O’Neill, acting director of enforcement and removal operations at ICE’s Philadelphia office, challenges the lawfulness of the detention.

In a prepared statement, ICE spokesman Jason Koontz said previously that Mr. Cordova Flores “unlawfully entered” the U.S. in Yuma, Ariz., in 2023 and had “failed to report to his immigration proceedings as ordered by the judge.”

In Christian theology, the “cruel injustices” that led to Jesus Christ’s crucifixion on the cross before his resurrection on Easter are continuing today with the prosecution of migrants, Erin Jones, a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church, told the crowd Sunday. But there was still hope, she said.

“This is happening every day, not 2,000 years ago, but here in our communities,” she said before blessing Mr. Martinez on his way. “God is delivering new life; God is on the move.”

First Published: April 5, 2026, 7:58 p.m.
Updated: April 5, 2026, 10:00 p.m.

Read the full article on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “Activist challenges immigration crackdown: ‘Is this who you want to be?‘”