The Trump administration’s aggressive crackdown on immigrants has prompted boisterous street protests in Minneapolis, New York and Chicago, as well as quieter acts of resistance, including, most recently, an eight-day pilgrimage led by faith-based groups from an immigration detention center in California’s high desert to the downtown Los Angeles Federal Building.
Capital & Main documented the first morning of their journey, which began at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County, where about 1,800 people were being held as of April. The 96.5-mile trek, which began on Sept. 29 and is expected to wrap up on Tuesday, was organized by the faith-based social justice coalition Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE), Nefesh, a progressive Jewish nonprofit, and Sacred Resistance, the advocacy ministry of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles.
With the sun still low in the sky, dozens of attendees listened to faith leaders deliver speeches about the spiritual significance of resistance. CLUE Executive Director the Rev. Jennifer Gutierrez led the group in prayer before participants placed flowers in front of the detention center’s gates. Then began their long walk to Los Angeles. Organizers said they plan to walk 12 to 16 miles a day, resting at various congregations along the way.
In an interview before the pilgrimage, Gutierrez said the journey was designed to raise awareness about the Trump administration’s treatment of immigrants, who have been “hunted down and kidnapped by ICE,” and the squalid conditions inside the federal detention center in Adelanto.
“People are eating rotten food and don’t have clean water to drink and are existing in terrible temperatures without air conditioning out in the desert,” she said, adding that the journey is also a way “to call one another to be closer to what God wants for us in terms of loving each other.”
At sunrise, attendees begin signing in for the pilgrimage event across the street from the Adelanto ICE Processing Center.
A participant stretches in preparation for the long walk ahead. A cloth with the image of a monarch butterfly — a symbol used by protesters to represent what Nefesh founder Rabbi Susan Goldberg described as the “beauty of migration” — is draped over a sign.
CLUE organizer Sithy Bin — who was arrested by immigration authorities in 2020 and held in Mesa Verde Detention Center — speaks about his personal connection to the fight for immigrants’ rights.
Left: CLUE Executive Director the Rev. Jennifer Gutierrez leads faith leaders and activists in prayer.
Right: Victorville City Council candidate Derek Marshall (seen here wearing a white shirt and tie), stands among protesters while holding a placard honoring Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz, who died while in ICE custody in California earlier this year.
The Rev. Sam Pullen — an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ — stands in the middle of the street, arms outstretched so as to stop traffic and allow pilgrimage participants to safely cross the street and reach the Adelanto ICE Processing Center. Rabbi Jason van Leeuwen (seen here wearing a tallit, or Jewish prayer shawl) holds a lulav and etrog, sacred plants associated with the Jewish pilgrimage holiday of Sukkot, which happened to overlap with the protest action.
Left: Rabbi Goldberg, an organizer of the pilgrimage, places a flower in front of the Adelanto ICE Processing Center. The rabbi said she got the idea for the event during a fellowship when she learned about the central role pilgrimages play in various ancient faiths.
Right: Flowers are laid out in front of the entrance to the Adelanto ICE Processing Center.
Faith leaders and activists begin their pilgrimage to Los Angeles from Adelanto, dwarfed by the pylons and powerlines that stretch across the Mojave Desert.
Left: Kevin Kang, pastor at Tujunga United Methodist Church, walks eastward away from the Adelanto ICE Processing Center. His church has provided shelter for refugees released from Adelanto after CLUE posted bond for them.
Right: The Rev. Andy Schwiebert, pastor at Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Koreatown, said he was participating in the pilgrimage because “our faith calls us to welcome strangers and this country is a nation of immigrants.” He said a member of his church’s community was detained at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in the fall of 2025.
Less than two miles into the pilgrimage, Angelica Salas (left), the executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, and Gutierrez (right) stop the crowd to announce the breaking news that Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a package of bills intended to protect immigrant communities in the crosshairs of the Trump administration’s crackdown. Those bills included a ban on shock gloves, which ICE recently announced it would provide officers, and a 25% tax on private detention centers, including the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, which is operated by Boca Raton, Florida-based GEO Group.
Steve Doutt, who is 74, joined the first day of the pilgrimage to “show solidarity for those currently detained in America’s concentration camps” and to affirm the inherent dignity of “all eight billion of us on the planet who were created in the image of God.”
Sacred Resistance’s the Rev. Canon Jaime Edward-Acton (left) points at Scott Shulman, who provided the pilgrims with snacks and beverages on their first planned break of the journey.
Shulman, who left the country to avoid being drafted to fight in the Vietnam War, reminisced about the political protests of his youth. “Back then, we were organized. We protested all the time. People felt like we were facing life or death,” he said. “I think people are too complacent today. … I’ve been telling my friends this is my fuck ICE pilgrimage because I’m angry. I’m angry at our government, our treasonous administration.”
A protester holds up a butterfly cutout as the group continued its march toward Los Angeles.
