For months, small businesses in Pittsburgh have had signs in their front windows, warning U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that they are not welcome inside. As we all know, when President Donald Trump took office in January of 2025, he made a long, long series of executive orders, including rescinding laws that protected immigrants. Since then, ICE has been targeting major cities as part of its deportation initiative, Operation Metro Surge.
Minneapolis is one of the cities that has seen an increase in high-profile criminal activity (on behalf of ICE) as of late, but Pittsburgh is no exception. From late January to late June of 2025, 447 individuals were arrested by ICE in the Pittsburgh area, Pittsburgh’s Public Source reports. In a separate article, the news outlet noted that, in July and August, ICE reached approximately 140 arrests per month. In 2025 alone, ICE arrested nearly 1,000 Pittsburgh residents.
However, the high-profile murder of Renee Good in Minneapolis wasn’t even the first time an ICE agent had fatally shot someone. The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to reporting on gun violence, has a map that stays updated on ICE shootings around the country, and how fatal they were. The first recorded shooting took place on March 15, 2025, in which Ruben Ray Martinez was murdered during a traffic stop. ICE, of course, did not disclose this, so it was first reported by Newsweek on February 18th, 2026.
All this is to say, who really knows how many deaths have already happened at the hands of ICE? The Trace map is a record of all the known shootings, but there are likely many more that we just don’t know about. It’s disturbing, but this isn’t news to any of us. So, what can we do about it? I’m still trying to figure that out myself. ICE has proven that you lose if you’re here illegally; you lose when you’re here legally; you lose when you follow orders from ICE; you lose when you’re a bystander trying to record these atrocities; you lose when you try to help anyone injured by ICE, and the list goes on and on.
It’s important to know your rights, but how far will that get you in a life-or-death situation when ICE is abusing its power and refusing to follow the law? The hard truth is that we don’t know. There’s no logic behind any of this—it’s unpredictable and impossible to reason with. The good news is that, while it may look like there is no end in sight in terms of stopping ICE’s terror over this country, highly reported cases spread awareness and do make a difference.
On January 29, 2026, in Oakmont, Jose Flores was taken into ICE custody while clearing the snow from his car to take his 8-year-old daughter, who was inside the car, to school. Flores, who is here on a work visa, was told by ICE agents that he entered the country illegally, and he notes that they didn’t “show him a badge or a warrant before taking him into custody,” the Trib reports. His wife, Harriett Flores, claims that, when she tried to ask questions, ICE agents told her to “shut up because her daughter was present.”
Flores was held in a jail in West Virginia and was originally awaiting a hearing scheduled for February 19th, but was released on February 7, following public outcry and pressure from state officials, including Representative Chris Deluzio and Republican Senator Dave McCormick.
Employees and customers of the Oakmont Bakery, where Flores works, rallied for his release. Critics suspected that the Bakery was responsible for Flores’s arrest because of its support for the Trump administration, but I couldn’t find substantiated evidence for that claim. The business has had ‘surprise’ visits from Eric Trump and JD Vance, and has a long-standing tradition of selling cookies during presidential elections, with the faces of the candidates. By October of 2024, the Bakery had sold over 21,000 Trump cookies, 6,000 Kamala Harris cookies, and nearly 10,000 for the third party, but all this proves is that even cookie sales are polarized in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. In the end, the owner of the Bakery, Mark Serrao, picked Flores up from a detention center about two hours from Pittsburgh, after which he returned home to be with his family, albeit under ICE monitoring.
Following this incident, Randy Cordova Flores was involved in a traffic stop in Springdale, a nearby community and my hometown. On February 10, Springdale police stopped Cordova Flores and turned him over to ICE under a 287(g) agreement. Like Flores in Oakmont, Cordova Flores has pending asylum status, a valid work visa, and no criminal record. In response, Springdale residents filled the town’s main street on February 14 in protest of ICE and the Springdale Borough. As of February 20, based on what information I could find online, Cordova Flores is currently being held in the same West Virginia jail, and there is no public information about a hearing or whether his release is imminent.
While the Oakmont council passed a resolution to prevent Oakmont police from complying with ICE, despite the protest, the Springdale Borough has taken no action or made any comments against ICE or on the matter in general. This stark difference in policy is very symbolic of the ongoing ‘rivalry’ between these two towns (when I was in high school, I heard us—Springdale High School—referred to as the ‘smokestack babies’ [due to the two smokestacks in the town that were demolished in 2023], and we called the students of Oakmont’s Riverview High School the ‘river rats’).
It doesn’t surprise me that Springdale officials have taken a stance of nondisclosure. Last year, it was announced that an AI Data Center would be built on the same land that the smokestacks once stood on (from one form of pollution to the next, it seems). The residents of Springdale had no ultimate say in the matter, despite direct effects on electric bills, property taxes, and property values. Springdale isn’t a town that can support this expensive change (not to mention what it’s doing to the environment and our health, but Republicans tend to prioritize economic issues)—as of 2023, the median household income was around $58k, which is lower than that of many surrounding suburbs. The point is, the Springdale Borough has a history of not having its residents’ best interests in mind.
Although I am disappointed in the outcome for my hometown, and for Randy Cordova Flores, and for all of those who will be affected by the Borough’s policies, there are many other suburban towns in Pittsburgh that have fallen victim to ICE’s raids—residents who deserve organized efforts in support of them living here, whether that be in Pittsburgh or elsewhere in the country. We might not see the payoff of protesting immediately, but it gets the word out, and tells policymakers that we won’t support them if they support ICE. There’s only so much the average resident can do against an oppressive federal administration, and, when ICE is determined to act with force, local policies may seem like the only light at the end of the tunnel.