In a community that venerates its role as a crucible of American liberty, where the echoes of Washington’s army still linger in the preserved soil of Jockey Hollow, a different kind of federal operation unfolded Sunday morning.
Its target was not a British regiment, but a 17-year-old boy on his way to do laundry.
Juan Daniel Mendoza, a Morristown High School senior with a 4.2 grade-point average, was seized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on Speedwell Avenue.
On Thursday, after four days in a detention center in Elizabeth, a federal judge ordered him released, ruling his detention was unlawful.
The order did not critique the broader operation, which netted at least ten people, but found this particular arrest violated the teen’s due process rights.
The scene, as described by witnesses, possessed a jarring precision.
Men in tactical gear emerged from black sport utility vehicles. A young man was seen running, then captured. He was handcuffed and placed into a white vehicle. The incident lasted minutes, but the reverberations are lasting.
“I found his clothes, but I could not find him,” said Mendoza’s older brother, Jose, who said the teen entered the country alone as a child from Honduras.
His family says he has no criminal record and was pursuing Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, a protection for certain young immigrants.
The response in Morristown was immediate and textured by the town’s identity.
A bakery taped a sign to its door warning ICE agents without warrants to stay out. A parish deacon from St. Margaret’s church walked the sidewalks, offering counsel.
Mayor Tim Dougherty, who said he was given no advance notice, expressed “deep concern” and appealed for pro bono lawyers.
“Morristown is a community built by generations of immigrants, and our diversity is one of our greatest strengths,” Dougherty said. “Actions like this create fear and uncertainty.”
The federal government, through a Department of Homeland Security statement, described the arrests as “routine immigration enforcement actions,” noting those detained were either in removal proceedings or were felons. It did not specify Mendoza’s status.
But U.S. District Judge Evelyn Padin saw a clearer picture.
In her order, she barred authorities from re-arresting Mendoza without demonstrating that he is a flight risk or a danger. Her ruling suggests the government’s case, at least for this student, was built on something less than solid ground.
The community, meanwhile, had already acted. A hastily organized online fundraiser gathered nearly $93,000 for his defense.
A petition circulated among parents demanded the school district address the chilling effect of such operations. The normal rhythm of a Sunday was replaced by a nervous calculus, the simple act of crossing a street now weighed against unseen risks.
There is a historical irony here that needs no embellishment.
This is a town where America’s founding executive, General George Washington, commandeered a mansion for his headquarters and built a fort for protection.
Today, a different federal executive power operates with a similar suddenness, its authority felt not on a hilltop called Nonsense, but on a sidewalk outside a laundromat.
The judge’s order has returned Juan Daniel Mendoza to his family. But the question she implicitly answered remains for the community: does the relentless machinery of a national policy, applied without nuance on a Sunday morning, make a town more secure, or merely more afraid?
In Morristown, where history is both lesson and backdrop, the people are now witnessing one version of American power, while reaching for another—the kind found in a courtroom, a church, and the collective will of neighbors. The test is not over.
The Princeton Police Department confirmed that ICE agents there on Thursday had taken two people into custody.
ICE conducted raids in Warren Township on Monday morning, removing people from their cars and detaining them in multiple instances, which witnesses called “a pattern of emboldened and increasingly violent action taken to intimidate and terrorize neighbors and friends, especially those of color.”