A group of immigrant-rights advocates from Erie and Pittsburgh completed an eight-day, more than 100-mile march from the greater Pittsburgh area to the Moshannon Valley Processing Center.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s one of the largest immigration detention centers in the Northeast. For eight days, the group walked from town to town \u2014 covering more than 100 miles \u2014 hoping their presence alone would spark conversations about what immigrant families are facing here in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs an immigrant, I believe that human dignity is the most important thing that we have, and I just wanted to be part of something bringing attention to this issue.\u201d Carlos Mora, an organizer for Erie County United said.<\/p>\n
Mora says the march was about connection \u2014 and making sure people along the route understood why they were there.<\/p>\n
He says reactions along the way \u2014 both supportive and challenging \u2014 shaped the experience and reminded the group how much work still lies ahead.<\/p>\n
For organizer Jaime Martinez of Frontline Dignity, the walk was designed to make the issue impossible to ignore.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to highlight, again, the conditions of detention \u2014 how people are being trapped in their homes with human rights abuses, how they\u2019re being separated from their families, and how they have very little decision-making power.\u201d Jaime Martinez shared.<\/p>\n
\u201cErie County Councilman Rock Copeland showed his support, saying it\u2019s important for elected officials to listen when communities speak up about their concerns.\u201d Stephanie Logue reported.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the communities that they\u2019re walking through, like Cambria, those counties have agreements with ICE. I really wanted to demonstrate that there are alternative choices we can make.\u201d Erie County Councilman Rock Copeland explained.<\/p>\n
Martinez and Mora say that kind of attention is exactly what they hoped the march would bring.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat we can act. We can call the Clearfield County commissioners. We can do everything in our power to protect our neighbors,\u201d Martinez said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is, of course, a country of opportunities and freedom \u2014 but also a country of human rights. And we need to obey and stand by those laws.\u201d Mora added<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A group of immigrant-rights advocates from Erie and Pittsburgh completed an eight-day, more than 100-mile march from the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[50999,136,138,137,44105,8372,73],"class_list":["post-164149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-erie","tag-detention-center","tag-erie","tag-erie-headlines","tag-erie-news","tag-immigrant-rights","tag-march","tag-pittsburgh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164149","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=164149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}