Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “Pittsburgh activist’s 8-day trek aims to raise awareness about Central Pa. ICE facility”

Frontline Dignity was featured in the following Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article: “Pittsburgh activist’s 8-day trek aims to raise awareness about Central Pa. ICE facility”

From the article:

On Easter Sunday, Jaime Martinez plans to arrive at the Immigration and Customs Office on Pittsburgh’s South Side early in the morning and begin walking east on an eight-day trek toward the Moshannon Valley in rural Central Pennsylvania.

Mr. Martinez, the founder of the immigration advocacy group Frontline Dignity, will be walking about 120 miles through the western half of the state until he reaches Moshannon Valley Processing Center, the largest ICE detention center in the Northeast. His walk is part of a demonstration to raise awareness about the facility, fundraise, and meet Pennsylvanians in their own communities along the way to discuss the ongoing immigration crackdown.

“This is first a pilgrimage and then a protest … people don’t know that Moshannon Valley Processing Center is in our state,” he said of the facility in Decatur, a few miles outside Philipsburg. “They don’t know the way it’s run and they don’t know the impact that it’s having on families.”

Moshannon Valley Processing Center, an 1,878-bed facility, has been the target of dozens of civil and human rights complaints over the years. Two ICE detainees died in custody at the facility last year.

Habeas filings soar in Western Pa. amid immigration detention surge

“People should not be warehoused in a space like this and we want to talk about that in a really truthful way,” Mr. Martinez said.

An itinerary for Mr. Martinez’s walk — dubbed the Frontline on Foot campaign — will be released by the organization before he embarks on Sunday. Along the way he will be staying with organizers who have volunteered to house him and provide spaces for community gatherings.

Mr. Martinez said he had been prepared to walk alone, but people have since committed to joining him during various stretches of the journey. He said a handful of different people will be staying with him during each overnight stop.

“We have these communities energized and fired up that are going to walk with us, that are going to welcome us into their towns, and host community gatherings,” he said. “Folks are opening up their homes, their businesses, their churches in order for us to be able to have a platform in their communities.”

Although he has already received support from communities he plans to travel through, Mr. Martinez said he is not expecting everyone will agree with him on the issue of immigration enforcement along the way, especially in the more conservative communities he expects to pass through.

“They might feel differently than me but I can assure you that we likely also share a lot of life experiences and so we’ll be looking for common ground,” he said. “We’re not going to convert the entirety of Western Pennsylvania to a specific worldview and I don’t think that’s the intention of what we’re trying to do. What we are doing is putting a real dent in breaking the stereotypes and molds of who people think immigrants are.”

Once he arrives in Moshannon, Mr. Martinez said he plans to hold a prayer vigil outside the detention center and a demonstration regarding the conditions inside the facility.

He and those joining him will also be calling on Clearfield County commissioners to vote against renewing the five-year contract the county has with ICE to essentially act as a middle man between the federal agency and the Geo Group, the publicly traded prison company that runs the facility.

That contract will be up for renewal in September.

“We want to work on creating a solution that keeps the community’s economic conditions while also respecting the human rights of our neighbors,” he said.

The eight-day walking trek will not be Mr. Martinez’s first, or longest.

He said he was inspired to make the journey through Moshannon by his experience walking the Camino de Santiago, or the Ways of St. James, a Christian pilgrimage to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain, where the remains of Jesus’ apostle Saint James are believed to be held in a casket under the cathedral’s altar.

“Along the way, I walked 1,000 miles alone with a backpack, met folks from six different continents, and realized when you’re able to block out all of the noise of the world and we start to dig into human relationships … that’s where real connection starts to form,” he said. “I think the whole premise of what we’re doing through Frontline Dignity is recognizing that there’s a real need to return to those kinds of human connections.”

First Published: April 2, 2026, 1:42 p.m.
Updated: April 3, 2026, 2:00 p.m.

You can view the full article on The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, here.