They've traveled for nearly 40 days, risking arrest, or worse, deportation.
Their home for the past month: a 40-year-old converted Greyhound bus dubbed "Priscilla."
Among them are day laborers, students, stay-at-home moms and leaders of nonprofit organizations.
And at each stop along the way, in states with some of the most stringent laws against undocumented immigrants, they chant: "No papers, no fear. Dignity is standing here."
The group's cross-country journey ended this week in Charlotte, site of the Democratic National Convention.
The timing is strategic. Their goal while they're here is to call Democrats' attention to the need for comprehensive immigration reform.
The trip began July 29 in Phoenix - home to controversial Sheriff Joe Arpaio - and has taken them through 15 cities. Stops have included Denver, Austin, Texas; New Orleans; Atlanta; Birmingham, Alabama; and Knoxville, Tennessee.
For Leticia Ramirez, the scariest portion of the cross-country drive came while traveling from Austin to New Orleans on a stretch of Interstate 10 known for police checkpoints.
She knew the bus, emblazoned with the words "No Papers No Fear," would be an obvious target to be stopped.
The 27-year-old mother of three had one fear: "I was thinking of my kids. I didn't know if I was going to see them again."
The bus made it through to New Orleans without incident.
"We knew the risk in joining this movement, why not risk it?" Ramirez said. "That's why we are here."
Efforts to call attention to the group's cause have escalated as the journey has progressed, beginning with quiet news conferences and cultural performances in Denver and growing to include sit-ins across the street from the Knoxville County Sheriff's Office in Tennessee.
On Tuesday, they made their biggest stand yet, taking over an intersection near the Democratic convention holding banners defiantly proclaiming, "Undocumented" and "Migration is a human right."
In all, 10 people were arrested and charged with impeding traffic, Charlotte police said. None faces deportation proceedings, said Ross Feinstein, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
"ICE has taken no enforcement action against the Ride for Justice activists arrested Tuesday in Charlotte," Feinstein said in a statement. "ICE is focused on smart, effective immigration enforcement that prioritizes the removal of criminal aliens, recent border crossers and egregious immigration law violators, such as those who have been previously removed from the United States."
The group said it planned the act of civil disobedience "because we are tired of the mistreatment. We are tired of waiting for change and we know that it never comes without risk or without sacrifice."
Among those arrested was 25-year-old Ireri Unzueta Carrasco. Unzueta, who lives in Chicago, has a familiar story. Born in Mexico City, she came to the United States when she was 7 years old after her father was offered a job. To be with him, Unzueta, her mother and sister made the trip on tourist visas.
When the visas ran out, "we had already started to make our lives here."
They stayed, but not without consequences. For Unzueta and her sister, being undocumented meant no access to financial aid for school. No scholarships. No opportunity to study abroad.
It also meant being away from their extended family in Mexico.
"There was always fear, knowing deportation is a risk," she said. "But more than fear, I was angry and sad. ... I wanted to be with my family and play with my cousins and grow up alongside them."
She says the risk of her undocumented status really hit home for her three years ago when a friend of the family faced deportation proceedings.
"It really pushed me to figure out how to defend him," she said.
She started organizing an effort to draw attention to the friend's cause, petitioning local leaders and sending thousands of letters and faxes to ICE Director John Morton and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
She calls it her campaign of "coming out of the shadows, showing people we are not just numbers, we are human beings."
The friend was eventually released without consequence.
Her successful effort caused her to realize "the power we had when we organized."
"It was the first time I really felt that I could have control over what it meant to be undocumented," she said.
At age 55, Phoenix resident Maria Rodriguez is one of the oldest riders on the bus. Though she's a permanent resident of the United States, she joined the group's movement because, like many of her peers, she has family members who are undocumented, including her brother, who has been deported.
Immigration legislation "affects us all," she says, but most of all, it has lasting effects on the children of undocumented migrants.
Though they may be born in this country, they live with the fear that their parents could be deported at any time, Rodriguez says. As a result, they suffer
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