Randy Cordova Flores is home again in Springdale, taking his son to soccer practice and living near his protective older sister after four months in ICE detention.
He is grateful. But his relief is complicated by who he left behind.
“I was lucky,” he said, with his sister acting as an interpreter, referring to the family, friends and online strangers who contributed money and emotional support as he fought for his release. “I am blessed that all the people helped us through. Not everyone is like that. Not everyone has somebody to help them.”
Cordova Flores, 36 said he feels happy to be reunited with his family, but sad for those he came to know in the Moshannon Valley Processing Center — the Clearfield County facility that is the largest ICE detention center in the Northeast. He said he met men there who had come to the U.S. seeking asylum from dangerous places, including Haiti.
“Some guys said that they would rather be killed here than in their country, so their mom can’t see them,” said Cordova Flores’ sister, Paulette Cordova Pacheco. “They said that to him.”
Cordova Flores, a Springdale father of two who works in landscaping and came to the U.S. from Peru in 2023, was detained after a traffic stop in his borough drew him into the Trump administration’s expanded immigration enforcement system.
The Springdale Police signed a 287(g) agreement to cooperate with ICE in November. Flores was arrested in February when local police pulled him over for a traffic violation, and an accompanying ICE officer accused him of missing an immigration court appearance.
Cordova Flores entered the country without documentation in 2023, but says he is seeking asylum and has never missed a court appearance.
Four months after his arrest, he won his release through a petition for habeas corpus, a centuries-old legal concept allowing prisoners to ask a judge to determine whether their detention is legal.
The Trump administration announced in 2025 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 for bond while their cases go through the courts. Before 2025, that distinction was reserved for people detained at the border.
The habeas corpus petitions are a challenge to that policy and they have largely been successful, though slow and expensive. Case in point: Flores’ petition for habeas corpus was successful but took four months and at least $40,000.
His release allows him to live freely while his asylum case continues (though he has to wear an ankle monitor). His long-term freedom in this country is not guaranteed. How does he plan to get on with his life with that uncertainty?
“Following everything they ask me to do, and working,” Cordova Flores said. “I want to spend more time with my kids now. I appreciate every minute now with them. I want to make up for lost time.”
During four months in detention, he missed his children’s birthdays and his sister’s wedding.
His sister added that she doesn’t think the experience “is ever going to go away” for either of them, “because that helped us to see how bad something could be.”
‘Somebody is always behind me’
It was about 8:45 a.m. Feb. 10, and he was on his way to work. Cordova Flores was pulled over and arrested by a police officer he recognized from around town; at least one ICE agent accompanied him. The agent did not accuse Cordova Flores of a crime but alleged he had missed a court date in his immigration case, a charge Cordova Flores denies.
“I’m respectful to all jobs, police, ICE,” Cordova Flores said. “ … We understand police have a job. We understand ICE have a job. But we do not agree with somebody saying something about you that is not true.”
He said before the arrest he would wave to Springdale borough officers as they passed by on the street, and they would wave back. Rolling back into town after the long drive from Moshannon, he didn’t feel safe.
“I feel that somebody is always behind me,” he said.
Cordova Pacheco said the arrest made her own street an emotional struggle. “When I passed by where he was pulled over, the first month, every time I passed, [I] cried,” she said.
The agreement between Springdale and ICE that led to Cordova Flores’ arrest has sparked protest in the borough, on the main street and in council meetings, resulting in two arrests.
Four months in detention
Before he went to Moshannon, Cordova Flores spent a week in a federal prison in West Virginia, where he said he was confined to a darkened cell for 23 hours per day.
“The hard part is that in the West Virginia jail, he saw the actual criminal people, murderers, rapists,” his sister said. “They had more privileges” than Cordova Flores.
“I remember when he called me, ‘No I won’t live here, I won’t make it,’” she said.
At Moshannon, detainees lived in large, communal rooms and things were mostly calm, Cordova Flores said.
“Because they are not criminals,” he said. “The only difference they have is cultural. There’s no violence. It’s not the same thing as being charged as a rapist or some crime.”
He said it was hard to get good rest because people slept at different times throughout the day and night, and some detainees prayed at odd hours. He guessed the food was made “disgusting on purpose,” with no salt or other seasoning, cooked only in water.
He said he and his co-detainees would save food from their meals and he would combine it with seasonings and sauces he bought at the commissary, using a shared microwave oven to enhance the food.
He said he passed the time through a mix of prayer, phone calls to family and playing soccer when the weather permitted.
‘Everyone who goes there is scared’
During a 90-minute interview on Wednesday night, two men called Cordova Flores’ cell phone. Both were detained at the time at Moshannon; the siblings wanted to help them. They told one, a Haitian man, that they would send $50 to his commissary account and try to arrange a French interpreter for a court date. They told the other, from Nicaragua, they would send him some money, too.
Their funds are limited, but they share a desire to help people who are still detained in the system Cordova Flores only recently left.
“Seeing how people are suffering is a shock,” Cordova Pacheco said. “ … If someone who is reading this is willing to help somebody who really needs help, contact me.”
She said the two worry most about the detainees from Haiti, who would face grave danger if they returned to their home country.
“They return and they will murder them,” she said. “When they are young and they don’t join the gangs, they kill them.”
Cordova Flores said his advice to those who end up in Moshannon is to look to others at the facility who can offer help.
“There are people there who have been detained there for more time, so they know and can teach you how to use the commissary,” he said. “I tried to help [newer detainees] understand because everyone who goes there is scared.”
Charlie Wolfson is the local government reporter for Pittsburgh’s Public Source. He can be reached at charlie@publicsource.org.
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