Jaime Martinez, community defense organizer at Casa San José, coordinates with Rapid Response Network volunteers outside Emiliano’s Mexican Restaurant in Gibsonia on June 17, after reports that federal agents were idling nearby in unmarked vehicles.
Casa San José has trained hundreds of volunteers to monitor and respond to immigration enforcement. Public Source followed them through raids, courthouse watches and late-night calls.
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As federal immigration enforcement intensifies across the country, a local response has quickly scaled up across the Pittsburgh region. In Beechview, the nonprofit Casa San José has built a Rapid Response Network of trained volunteers who monitor and document ICE activity across Allegheny County and beyond.
The network launched during the first Trump administration but has ramped up since January. As of July 30, it includes more than 250 trained volunteers — with nearly 175 more signed up for future training.
Casa San José, founded in 2013, focuses on immigrant rights and the Pittsburgh region’s Latino community — a mission amplified as the Trump administration rolls back protections for immigrants and directs federal resources toward a crackdown and mass deportations.
Organizers traverse city neighborhoods, gather in church basements and empty parking lots, and educate residents about their rights and federal immigration tactics. Along with trained volunteers, who are prepared to legally observe, document and accompany people at risk of being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE], they respond in real time to sightings, arrests and raids.
Pittsburgh’s Public Source spent more than a month embedded with Casa San José’s organizers and volunteers, tracking their efforts from the courthouse to restaurants as they responded to immigration enforcement and supported families under threat.
3:47 p.m. June 14 at the City-County Building, Downtown
“They are disappearing our people. This is our reality. Every single day. Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not happening. We cannot continue to allow this to happen in our communities,” said Casa San José Executive Director Monica Ruiz.
“Casa San José is the only organization on this side of the state that is doing this kind of work.”
Ruiz said she has received five death threats since November, forcing her to relocate Casa San José’s office and to reconsider speaking publicly.
11:02 p.m. June 17 at Emiliano’s Mexican Restaurant, Gibsonia
Sharon Bonavoglia was the first to arrive at a quiet strip mall in Gibsonia late on June 17. She had received the call because she lives nearby, and because she’s one of a growing network of volunteers responding to reports of federal immigration enforcement in and around Allegheny County.
The 67-year-old retired teacher from McCandless described the three unmarked cars with tinted windows in the parking lot. One, a Black Chevrolet Tahoe, was parked at the loading dock, its engine running. A white SUV idled around the side, and a black Dodge Charger in front. Men in tactical vests sat inside.
Soon more volunteers arrived, eight in total, from Ross, Sewickley, Cranberry and McCandless.
The volunteers waved at the agents, two of whom exited their vehicle and identified themselves as members of the FBI.
Then the news came, and when the KDKA cameraman began to film the idling cars, the officers pulled away.
“Ice melts in the sunlight, isn’t that what they say?” organizer Jaime Martinez said.
Inside Emiliano’s, nine workers remained quiet in a back room with the lights off and the doors locked. A few volunteers left to scout the surrounding area for the agents. Martinez paced the wet parking lot, speaking with the workers on his cell phone. “We have eight people here to walk you home,” he told them in Spanish. Some time later, they texted Martinez: “We’re afraid and we don’t want to risk it,” voting among themselves to stay the night inside the restaurant.
There have been multiple reports across the United States of agents arresting people with valid visas and, in some cases, U.S. citizens, and deporting people without due process. Between Jan. 20 and late June, ICE detained 111,590 people nationwide, 447 of whom were arrested in the Pittsburgh area, according to ICE data.
Bonavoglia’s voice broke. “This is dreadful. I’m just angry,” she said.
12:11 p.m. June 25 at Tepache Mexican Kitchen and Bar, Mars
5:34 p.m. June 26 at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office, South Side
5:53 p.m. June 29 at Trace Brewing, Bloomfield
12:39 p.m. June 30 in Carnegie
Brittany Gonzalez received a collect call and quickly accepted. It was Macario, her husband and father to their children. He came to the United States from Guatemala in 2009. ICE agents zip-tied him at the family’s alterations business in Carnegie on May 20, his birthday and the couple’s ninth anniversary. Macario has been held in ICE detention at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center since, denied bond with a pending appeal.
Kid duty and the business have fallen to Brittany alone.
“My youngest son, he was really just upset … he came to see me a few days before his birthday,” Macario said. “He said, ‘I want you to be at my birthday.’ But I’m not there. I don’t know how to answer him that question, because I know I can’t be there. He’s going to say I’m a liar…
“Yesterday, my wife came with my little son, 20 months. He was crying when he left. He wants to hug me, but we are not allowed … I’m not able to hold him or talk to him face to face. They have glass between us. It’s a really hard time. Two months. I pray. I pray it’s going to be over and I can just be with them again.”
11:22 a.m. July 9 at Butler County Government Center
“Why are we doing this in Butler County? Everybody says ‘public safety!’ Are we unsafe here because of our undocumented immigrants? I don’t think so,” Pauline Peluso challenged during a July 9 public meeting of the Butler County commissioners. “I think I feel more unsafe with a masked man coming with a car, dragging people off the street into cars. That makes me feel unsafe.”
The commissioners, of whom two of three are Republican, did not comment during the meeting on the Butler County sheriff’s decision to sign a cooperation agreement with ICE. Interviewed after the meeting, the Republicans maintained the arrangement was for the Sheriff’s Office to determine, while the Democrat voiced strong opposition.
In an email to a concerned constituent, Commission Chair Leslie Osche, a Republican, suggested that the subjects of local ICE raids are linked to Mexican drug cartels that “kill people” and traffic drugs. “Would you want your parents or children or brothers or sisters to be tortured or killed? I don’t think so,” Osche wrote.
1:22 p.m. July 10 in Lawrenceville
11:05 a.m. July 11 at Casa San José headquarters, Beechview
(Left) Jaime Martinez meets with volunteers in his office at Casa San José in Beechview. (Right) Monica Ruiz, executive director of Casa San José, joins a strategy meeting with Martinez and Guillermo Peréz, a volunteer who helps run the group’s bond fund. The fund supports people detained by immigration authorities by covering bond costs, which can run thousands of dollars. In July, ICE moved to restrict bond for those who entered the country illegally while their cases are pending.
7:01 p.m. July 15 at East Liberty Presbyterian Church
Below the spires that tower over Highland Avenue, 54 people filled the Good Samaritan room in the basement of East Liberty Presbyterian Church. Rows of mostly older, white residents of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County listened intently, and as Jaime Martinez spoke, many jotted detailed notes.
“412-736-7167,” Martinez began. “This is the 24/7 Casa San José emergency line, or ICE watch hotline.
“If you suspect ICE is in your neighborhood, if you suspect you see them on your morning commute, on your drive back home from work, call this number. Don’t hesitate. We want to know everything. We want this phone to be blowing up.”
“But how did we get here?” he asked, recalling the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where the crowds held red, white and blue signs up for national television cameras that read MASS DEPORTATIONS NOW.
He spoke of misinformation, echo chambers and a wave of executive orders from President Donald Trump “systematically stripping people of their legal statuses.”
He pointed to Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” with $170 billion for immigration enforcement — $75 billion of it to expand ICE: more agents, more arrests and a jump in detention capacity from 40,000 to 100,000.
Policy changes have sharply reduced who qualifies for bond, he said, leaving undocumented immigrants without violent convictions or flight risk detained throughout their case, without their families, for sometimes months or years.
Supporters of these changes argue they are necessary to enforce immigration law and deter illegal entry. They view such measures as critical to restoring order at the border and protecting public safety.
Martinez told the room: “We are getting attacked by ICE. Our immigrant communities are totally under attack.”
By the end of the presentation, a gray-haired man raised his hand: “So, how do we join?”
1:58 p.m. July 22 at Pittsburgh Municipal Court, Uptown
Jaime Martinez stood in front of the Pittsburgh Municipal Court on First Avenue, speaking into a cell phone. Hanging up, he turned around:
“This is the scoop,” he said. An immigration attorney had called Martinez; their client needed an escort. ICE had been reported outside the courthouse within the hour. Martinez dispatched a response volunteer.
“We’re going to keep our eyes peeled for those ICE officers. And then we’ll figure out what comes next,” Martinez said. “I’ll do a little sweep inside, and figure out what I can find.”
Martinez disappeared into courtroom #4, speaking with a public defender who had called the hotline and said at least two ICE agents had been in the building. Martinez shared a description: White shirt and bald man. Blue baseball cap, green shirt, khakis.
The public defender said two agents came into the building and handed a warrant to an Allegheny County sheriff’s deputy.
Upstairs, a Venezuelan man sat alone near the end of the hallway, wearing shiny black shoes and a tucked-in blue collared shirt.
When Martinez emerged from the courtroom, he had a plan. The man, along with an interpreter, a Venezuelan woman and a man from Honduras would walk to the exit accompanied by Marisa Tobias, a volunteer from the response network. Martinez would pick them up there in his car. In situations where ICE approaches during an accompaniment, volunteers are trained to remain calm, observe and document the interaction without physically interfering.
The plan went smoothly, and Martinez dropped his passengers off in a nearby garage.
“I don’t know any of these people’s immigration statuses,” he said before driving off. “I don’t ask.”
12:10 p.m. July 24 at Pittsburgh Municipal Court, Uptown
Two federal agents sat just beyond security inside the entrance of Pittsburgh Municipal Court.
The pair carried guns on their hips, and one, gray-haired with a goatee, carried a blue folder full of documents. The other, younger and wearing a blue polo and eyeglasses, had a badge hanging on a chain around his neck: Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI, a division of ICE. Special Agent.
The agents sat with an Allegheny County Sheriff’s Office sergeant, speaking casually. A public defender had noticed and alerted courthouse volunteers on the second floor as well as a client who was scheduled to arrive with an interpreter, but never showed.
After at least 30 minutes, the agents stood, shook hands with the sergeant deputy and left the courtroom. Asked to identify themselves, the agents said they were with Homeland Security, climbed into an unmarked navy Chevrolet Blazer driven by a third agent, and departed.
Photographs by Quinn Glabicki.
Quinn Glabicki is the environment and climate reporter at Pittsburgh’s Public Source. He can be reached at quinn@publicsource.org and on Instagram @quinnglabicki.
This article was fact-checked by Femi Horrall.
This article first appeared on Pittsburgh’s Public Source and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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