“Along with the emotional pain,” of having her husband detained by ICE, Leonela Marquez wrote on a GoFundMe posted in January, “we are now facing a terrifying reality: I don’t know how I will pay rent. I don’t know how I will buy food. I don’t know how I will afford diapers and formula.”
“And now we also must pay thousands of dollars in legal fees, because fighting for my husband’s freedom has a cost we cannot afford alone.”
Marquez’s husband, Mario Eduardo Fajardo Aviles, is one of hundreds of people with petitions for habeas corpus moving through Pittsburgh’s federal courthouse. Once a rarity in the Western District of Pennsylvania, habeas cases now make up a large share of the docket. That’s driven by the presence of the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Clearfield County, a novel interpretation of the law by the Trump administration and the determination of families doing whatever they can — including asking for the help of strangers — to gain freedom for their loved ones.
GoFundMe pages like Marquez’s — which has raised nearly $6,400 of the $6,500 goal — are enabling some families to compete with the federal government in court. When federal lawyers lose, they are so far not appealing those decisions. That may be an effort to avoid risking a higher court decision that could constrain the administration’s detentions.
A spokesperson for the Pittsburgh U.S. Attorney’s office declined to answer Public Source’s questions for this story.
‘You should have the body’
Claims for the centuries old concept of habeas corpus – a recourse for illegal detention – have multiplied since President Donald Trump’s crackdown began sweeping up thousands of immigrants with various legal statuses.
The 25-county Western District of Pennsylvania, with courthouses in Pittsburgh, Erie and Johnstown, has become a national hub for these cases because of its proximity to the largest ICE detention center in the northeast — the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Clearfield County.
Habeas corpus dates back to the Magna Carta and translates from Latin to “you should have the body.” A prisoner can petition for a judge to issue a “writ” of habeas corpus, which requires the government to physically bring the prisoner before the court. It’s a recourse often used when a prisoner alleges that the government is violating their constitutional rights in detaining them.
One recent example: Sewickley man Bruno Guedes da Silva, who was released last week after almost two months in ICE custody. The Feb. 22 arrest of da Silva, whose daughter is undergoing cancer treatment, drew headlines and public outcry. Less than a month later on March 20, his attorney filed a habeas petition in federal court. The government responded March 31, and the next day Judge Nicholas Ranjan granted the petition and ordered the government to take da Silva to a neutral immigration judge within 30 days. Less than two weeks after that ruling, da Silva was set to be released.
“With Bruno’s case, he entered [the U.S.] without inspection” in 2022, said his lawyer, Peter Rogers. “Normally I would have been able to give him a bond hearing straight off. But [the Trump administration] changed the rules.”
A screen grab of the GoFundMe benefiting the family of Mario Fajardo Aviles.
A 2025 Department of Justice memo announced that the government would deem people who have been living in the country for years as people “seeking admission” to the country, which by law means they are not eligible to be granted bond while their cases go through the courts. Before 2025, that distinction was reserved for people detained at the border.
“For all the years that I’ve been doing this, [the Department of Homeland Security] and the courts have interpreted the laws as those people [already in the U.S.] are bond eligible … For this administration, that didn’t work for them anymore,” Rogers said.
Rogers said all of his clients’ petitions for habeas writs have been granted, and all but one were then granted bond by an immigration judge. But “the client has to go through all this additional effort and expense just to get back to square one and have a bond hearing,” he said.
That means legal bills are piling up for families whose breadwinners are detained by ICE and are denied bond. Public Source has identified dozens of grassroots fundraisers on websites like GoFundMe that seek to raise money for Pittsburgh-area families in such situations.
A flood of cases
One attorney working on cases in the Western District of Pennsylvania, Brian Green, said habeas cases now make up 35% to 40% of the district court’s docket, a level unheard of before Trump entered office and ramped up immigration enforcement.
“Up until last year I had done four habeas cases in a 20-year career, and then in one year I had done 130,” Green said.
The district court’s public access site shows a meteoric rise. During the Trump administration’s first year, 2025, the number of immigration-related habeas petitions in the district increased more than five-fold over 2024. During the first quarter of 2026, cases have more than doubled the 2025 number.
Many cases are more complicated than da Silva’s, and not all are granted. And for many families, the longer a person is detained, the more time they go without income.
Below are details of other cases that illustrate the local ramifications of Trump’s immigration crackdown — the fight over the legally sacred right to due process unfolding in the courts, and desperate pleas for money from neighbors and strangers unfolding on the internet.
Turkish man’s plea may have been too late
One petition for a Pittsburgh-area detainee claimed his detention violated constitutional rights to due process. His claim, though, will never be tested because he self-deported before it reached a judge for a ruling.
That detainee, Mehmet Salim Yilmaz, was “granted voluntary departure” by an immigration judge in February, less than a month after filing the petition. According to a government request to have the petition dismissed, Yilmaz left the country on Feb. 11.
Acknowledging that, a federal judge dismissed his petition for habeas April 15.
Rogers, speaking about the legal landscape broadly and not about Yilmaz’s case, said part of the administration’s strategy is to push people to self-deport.
“They decided the most effective way to [remove as many people as possible] is if we can detain people, we know that many of them, once they are detained, are going to say, ‘You know what, I’m just going to go back to my country,’” Rogers said. “And that’s exactly what’s happened.”
Public Source’s attempts to make contact with Yilmaz or his acquaintances were not successful.
A fundraiser purporting to benefit Yilmaz’s family calls the man “a hardworking father and husband with a young child who deeply misses him,” and says the family is struggling with basic living expenses and legal fees. It raised $1,750 in the months before Yilmaz’s apparent departure.
A screen grab of the GoFundMe benefiting the family of Mehmet Yilmaz.
‘Mario is not a criminal’
Marquez’s fundraiser was set up Jan. 10 and has received 158 donations so far.
Marquez wrote in January that Fajardo Aviles is the family’s breadwinner and the couple have children aged 8, 6 and three months.
“My husband … was detained by ICE while we were leaving our home to go to work, like any normal, hardworking family,” Marquez wrote. “I was right there with him. Our 3-month-old baby was in my arms. In just a few moments, my children’s father was taken away from us.”
Court records show the government alleges Fajardo Aviles is a citizen of Ecuador and was detained on Nov. 26. (Marquez’s GoFundMe page does not mention his immigration status but his wife wrote that he has no criminal record or deportation order.)
On Dec. 10, according to court records, the government denied Fajardo Aviles a bond hearing that would normally be afforded to a criminal defendant. Their rationale: Fajardo Aviles is legally an applicant for admission to the United States, despite the fact that he has lived here since 2022.
“Most federal judges agree that that’s not allowed, and they’re releasing people by giving them bond hearings,” said Green, who is representing Fajardo Aviles.
Fajardo Aviles is also near the center of an ongoing legal dispute between a California district court, which ordered the government to grant bond hearings for a class of detainees including Fajardo Aviles, and the Department of Justice, which instructed its own immigration judges to ignore that order.
Fajardo Aviles’ case is still pending in the Western District of Pennsylvania.
More publicity, more donations
One of the most high-profile ICE detainees in the Pittsburgh area was Randy Cordova Flores of Peru, who claims to be actively pursuing asylum.
Cordova Flores’ attorney wrote in court filings that he was “granted permission to enter” the country in 2023 and given a notice to appear in court. The filing notes that he has attended all the hearings related to that notice. The government’s explanation to the court for his detention contradicts that, saying that he failed to report to a court date.
A screen grab of the GoFundMe benefiting the family of Randy Cordova Flores.
Cordova Flores’ attorney makes the same argument as Yilmaz and Fajardo Aviles: His client is being incorrectly treated as a person seeking to enter the country — despite having lived here for years. His 2026 arrest in Springdale Borough should put him in the category of detainees with the right to a bond hearing, he wrote in the petition.
The Springdale resident’s detention gained notice earlier this year as an example of a municipal police department collaborating with ICE and turning a routine traffic stop into an immigration enforcement operation.
His GoFundMe has raised nearly $35,000 so far from 511 individual donations, the most recent on April 11. An April 8 update from the organizer said Cordova Flores is still detained and the family has already spent $28,000 on legal fees, and expects bail to be set at more than $20,000.
“We are asking for your support because we don’t want to face the situation where a bond is granted for my brother, and we don’t have the money to bring him home,” wrote Paulette Pacheco, Flores’ sister and the campaign organizer.
What’s next?
For now, the cycle continues: ICE detains people it suspects of being in the country illegally, some hire lawyers to pursue a bond hearing via a federal habeas petition, and in most cases, the petitioners are receiving bond (and temporary freedom).
“Does requirement of mandatory detention apply to aliens who have been residing in the country for some period of time?” Judge Ranjan wrote in an order deciding a habeas case earlier this year. “On careful review, the court finds that it doesn’t, and therefore grants the writ.”
The government all but conceded the result in its response to Cordova Flores’ petition, writing that the “vast majority of district courts” have rejected its arguments. It noted that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is based in Texas and is seen as relatively conservative, has agreed with the government’s position.
Rogers noted the government is not appealing any of the district court’s decisions in his cases. Those appeals would go to the Pennsylvania-based Third Circuit.
“They are worried about how the Third Circuit might rule,” Rogers speculated. “You don’t take a case to the Third Circuit unless you have a strong case.”
As for da Silva: He was released, but had to wait a few days after a judge granted bond. Rogers said the Trump administration closed local offices that can accept bail payments, meaning bail had to be posted through an online system that takes longer.
Charlie Wolfson is the local government reporter for Pittsburgh’s Public Source. He can be reached at charlie@publicsource.org.
Max Chis of Lemali Consulting contributed.
This story was fact-checked by Katherine Weaver.
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