Metuchen Dad Arrested By ICE After School Drop-Off, Advocates Say

METUCHEN, NJ — A Metuchen man was arrested by ICE Thursday morning after dropping his daughters off at school, advocates and local officials said.

Roby Sanger was one of two Indonesian men in the country illegally who was arrested by ICE Thursday morning, advocate Rev. Seth Kaper-Dale said. Gunawan Liem of Franklin Park was also arrested after dropping his daughter off at her bus stop. Gov. Phil Murphy also reportedly went to Middlesex County to address the issue.

Sanger appears to have been arrested with no advance notice, Metuchen Mayor Jonahan Busch said.

"He was taken without notice, without any notice of our police department...obviously the family was given no notice," Busch said at a press conference Thursday afternoon, according to an APP reporter. "This is a man who has two kids in our school district... at this moment as we speak, his daughters don’t even know that he’s been detained.”

Patch has reached out to Busch for more information.

Police Chief David Irizarry confirmed to Patch that "Metuchen Police were not informed by any outside agency coming into our town before, during, or after any arrest was made." He said the arrest did not take place on school property.

Schools are considered a "sensitive location" by ICE officials, and they generally avoid making arrests there. Other sensitive locations include places of worship, medical offices and public demonstrations.

ICE agents also went to the home of a third man, Harry Pangamanan, in Highland Park mid-morning on Thursday. In a Facebook Live video posted by Kaper-Dale, two ICE agents can be seen knocking on the door of the home for several minutes before driving away (you can watch the video below).

Pangamanan recently earned the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Humanitarian Award from Highland Park Borough for his work rebuilding homes after Hurricane Sandy.

"ICE decides that they want to take the guy that just won the MLK award for repairing 209 houses during Hurricane Sandy and assault and threaten him," Kaper-Dale said in the live stream.

Update, Jan. 26: Community Rallies Around Metuchen Dad Arrested By ICE

ICE confirmed the arrests to Patch, but said they were routine and not based on ethnicity.

"During a targeted enforcement operation today, ICE arrested two foreign nationals in Franklin Park, NJ and Metuchen, NJ. These individuals have an order of removal from the United States issued by an immigration judge and upheld by the Board of Immigration Appeals," Emilio Dabul, a public affairs officer for ICE said. "All enforcement actions are a part of routine, daily targeted operations conducted by ICE around the country targeting criminal aliens and other immigration violators who are in the U.S. in violation of federal law. ICE does not target individuals based on religion, ethnicity, gender or race. Any suggestion to the contrary is patently false.”

Pangemanan has since claimed sanctuary in a nearby church, Kaper-Dale said. Murphy rushed to the church Thursday hours after the two Indonesians were detained by ICE officials.

All three men are part of a group of Indonesian Christians living in the Highland Park-Metuchen area. Gunawan Liem, of Franklin Park, and Roby Sanger, of Metuchen, were detained as they dropped their kids off at school Thursday morning, said the Rev. Seth Kaper-Dale, of the Reformed Church of Highland Park.

Murphy went to the church, which has been housing immigrants for years, on Thursday afternoon to hear the concerns from some of those immigrants, including one who avoided detention by not answering his door.

Many say they fled Indonesia, a Muslim-majority country, due to religious persecution. Churches have been burned in Indonesia and a pastor was decapitated in 2004. Approximately 80 undocumented Indonesian Christians live in New Jersey.

In May 2017, four Indonesian Christian men were deported from Central Jersey. In that case, all four men entered the country in the 1990s and overstayed tourist visas. The men applied for asylum, but their applications were rejected because they missed the deadline; asylum-seekers must apply within one year of arriving on U.S. soil.

• Read More: ICE Deports Christian Immigrants In Metuchen, Highland Park

With reporting by Carly Baldwin

Photo by John Moore/Getty Images