On a frigid January night, more than 500 people gathered at Shadyside Presbyterian Church to train in responding to federal immigration enforcement in the Pittsburgh area.
The Dignity in Action Rapid Response Training, hosted Jan. 20 by Frontline Dignity, taught participants about their rights and how to minimize escalation when dealing with law enforcement.
Organizer Jaime Martinez said the stakes are rising as the federal government ramps up immigration enforcement in Pittsburgh and across the country.
“What we’re also seeing is immigration enforcement going way into our communities,” Martinez said. “They’re staking out courthouses. … They are staked out in community businesses, local businesses, waiting outside in parking lots. They’re waiting outside in the parking lots of schools.”
The event focused on rapid response — coordinated civilian efforts to witness immigration enforcement activity and support people being taken into custody. As long as they do not interfere with law enforcement, these actions are protected by law. Lauren Leiggi and Sarah Hampton, both Allegheny County public defenders specializing in immigration law, led the training, speaking on how to prepare for rapid response and what to do during a response.
“Through doing public defense and immigration work, I can see how quickly not knowing how to interact with police officers can end you up in jail or incarcerated or detained for a few hours while they clear your name,” Leiggi said.
The public defenders encouraged attendees to prepare by memorizing phone numbers or writing them on an arm, having a transportation plan and emergency meeting place, and determining comfort levels with escalation in advance. They also encouraged documented U.S. citizens to bring copies of identification, such as a driver’s license or passport, instead of the originals.
Martinez emphasized the importance of community in rapid response efforts, opening the session by calling for a reflective moment of silence and encouraging participants to introduce themselves to two new people around them.
“We need to be connected with one another. Because the truth is we are living in a society where technology, our system, the infrastructure that we have built around our lives, is deeply dividing,” Martinez said. “And so from the very start, the key theme of this, if you take nothing else: Root yourself in your community.”
Frontline Dignity is a newly formed group that aims to train and equip people to respond safely to immigration enforcement activity. It does this through “Dignity Innovation Labs” meant to create a resilient community of responders. It gets financial sponsorship from The Global Switchboard, a Pittsburgh-area human rights and social justice nonprofit.
This new group emerges following a year in which rapid response to immigration enforcement activity was coordinated largely by Casa San José, which advocates for Pittsburgh’s Latino community. Martinez, a former employee of Casa San José, split from the group in November.
Citizen responses to ICE activity have received heightened attention since Jan. 7, when an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good in Minneapolis. The Trump administration has argued that the agent fired on Good in self-defense, but analyses of video of the incident raise questions about whether the agent was in danger.
Since then, members of the public in Minneapolis have repeatedly confronted officers, blowing whistles and yelling insults at ICE and U.S. Border Patrol. They, in turn, have used tear gas and chemical irritants against protesters. Bystanders have recorded video of officers using a battering ram to get into a house as well as smashing vehicle windows and dragging people out of cars.
Hampton and Leiggi also addressed what to do in the event that officers are doing something you know to be illegal, such as conducting a search without consent or a warrant, or using excessive force. They stressed clear and calm communication, and if the illegal activity continues, you are within your rights to record and take notes.
“Reminding people that what they’re doing is breaking the law is not going to make them stop,” Hampton said. “That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t matter. That’s why it’s so important for us to do this witnessing.”
“In these moments, it’s really easy to get overwhelmed by just how unfair it is, or how disgusting it is to watch. But the focus that we need to keep remembering is, we can only make changes if you have information to back up what we’re witnessing to begin with,” Hampton said. She encouraged responders to document specific information such as where, when and how a detention occurred.
“Get as much of that individual’s information as possible because we don’t want them to go missing. We want to know who they are, we want to know who their families are, and we want to know what happened to them,” Leiggi said.
ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Martinez said the group is seeking volunteers to work on rapid response, build community infrastructure and run the newly launched rapid response hotline, (412) 53-NO-ICE. The hotline takes calls in many languages, including English, Spanish and Portuguese, and will be used to coordinate rapid response and analyze immigration enforcement patterns.
Martinez closed the meeting with a personal story. Late at night on June 17, he and several other volunteers answered a call reporting unmarked cars waiting outside a Mexican restaurant in Gibsonia. When a small crowd of responders gathered, they called KDKA, which sent a reporter. When the cameras showed up, the cars drove away.
“Nine people walked home that night, kissed their families, because about eight or nine of us, and my dog, decided to show up in the middle of the night, walk some laps, and call a cameraman,” Martinez said.
The Associated Press contributed.
Katherine Weaver is an editorial intern at Pittsburgh’s Public Source and can be reached at Katherine@publicsource.org.
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