{"id":113033,"date":"2026-02-13T13:02:17","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T13:02:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/113033\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T13:02:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T13:02:17","slug":"casa-san-jose-makes-policy-changes-due-to-rise-in-ice-activity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/113033\/","title":{"rendered":"Casa San Jose makes policy changes due to rise in ICE activity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\tFor years, Casa San Jose has worked with the Hispanic\/Latino community in Pittsburgh. The organization is now adapting its operations policy in response to increased activity by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.&#8221;We&#8217;re not going to stop our advocacy work. There&#8217;s no way that&#8217;s what this administration wants us to do. And we&#8217;re not going to,&#8221; said Monica Ruiz, executive director of Casa San Jose.Ruiz emphasized that the organization has observed a significant rise in ICE activity, saying, &#8220;You know, we would probably get maybe like 10 to 15 calls a week, and we got like 10 to 15 calls in a day.&#8221;She described the fear that has gripped the community, saying, &#8220;They&#8217;re scared to death. They are scared to death. They&#8217;re afraid to leave their homes. They&#8217;re afraid to send their children to school. They&#8217;re afraid to go to the doctor. They&#8217;re afraid to go to the surgeries they have scheduled. They&#8217;re afraid to do anything. Go to the grocery store, go to church.&#8221;In response to the increased activity and recent events in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Casa San Jose transitioned to virtual services and is implementing several policy changes to ensure the organization&#8217;s employees and the people they serve are safe.&#8221;But we do have to rethink the way that we provide direct services to people, because we don&#8217;t want them to be in danger. We don&#8217;t want them to be in the spotlight,&#8221; Ruiz said. &#8220;We thought, you know, hey, you know, we have cameras and we have different security measures that we take. But that&#8217;s not enough. It&#8217;s not enough. Because at this point, you know, a lot of these agents are just doing whatever they want, however they want to. Whoever they want.&#8221;Despite the challenges, Ruiz remains hopeful that the measures taken at their new facility will be effective, and said they will not stop serving the community &#8220;And it is really unfortunate that it&#8217;s the helpers who are the ones being targeted, and all we&#8217;re trying to do is help people,&#8221; Ruiz said.Ruiz said they hope to officially move into their new facility later this year.\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\tPITTSBURGH \u2014 \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>For years, Casa San Jose has worked with the Hispanic\/Latino community in Pittsburgh. The organization is now adapting its operations policy in response to increased activity by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re not going to stop our advocacy work. There&#8217;s no way that&#8217;s what this administration wants us to do. And we&#8217;re not going to,&#8221; said Monica Ruiz, executive director of Casa San Jose.<\/p>\n<p>Ruiz emphasized that the organization has observed a significant rise in ICE activity, saying, &#8220;You know, we would probably get maybe like 10 to 15 calls a week, and we got like 10 to 15 calls in a day.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>She described the fear that has gripped the community, saying, &#8220;They&#8217;re scared to death. They are scared to death. They&#8217;re afraid to leave their homes. They&#8217;re afraid to send their children to school. They&#8217;re afraid to go to the doctor. They&#8217;re afraid to go to the surgeries they have scheduled. They&#8217;re afraid to do anything. Go to the grocery store, go to church.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In response to the increased activity and recent events in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Casa San Jose transitioned to virtual services and is implementing several policy changes to ensure the organization&#8217;s employees and the people they serve are safe.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But we do have to rethink the way that we provide direct services to people, because we don&#8217;t want them to be in danger. We don&#8217;t want them to be in the spotlight,&#8221; Ruiz said. &#8220;We thought, you know, hey, you know, we have cameras and we have different security measures that we take. But that&#8217;s not enough. It&#8217;s not enough. Because at this point, you know, a lot of these agents are just doing whatever they want, however they want to. Whoever they want.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Despite the challenges, Ruiz remains hopeful that the measures taken at their new facility will be effective, and said they will not stop serving the community<\/p>\n<p> &#8220;And it is really unfortunate that it&#8217;s the helpers who are the ones being targeted, and all we&#8217;re trying to do is help people,&#8221; Ruiz said.<\/p>\n<p>Ruiz said they hope to officially move into their new facility later this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For years, Casa San Jose has worked with the Hispanic\/Latino community in Pittsburgh. The organization is now adapting&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113034,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[21137,53994,53995,53996,53998,41006,7391,53997,54000,594,523,73,75,74,41267,53999,22287,2439,78],"class_list":["post-113033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-call","tag-casa-san-jose","tag-casa-san-jose-makes-policy-changes-amid-an-increase-of-ice-activity","tag-ice-activity","tag-latino-community","tag-minneapolis","tag-minnesota","tag-monica-ruiz","tag-operation-policy","tag-organization","tag-people","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-policy-change","tag-recent-event","tag-response","tag-way","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113033\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}