Federal officials disclosed limited information about an Aug. 14 immigration operation after local reporting sought details, leaving the arrest locations, detention sites and cases of more than half the people unknown.
MORRISTOWN, N.J. – The Department of Homeland Security has confirmed that federal immigration officers arrested 12 people near Morristown on August 14, but the agency publicly identified only five and did not disclose basic information about the other seven.
The confirmation came in an Aug. 24 report from Morristown Green, six days after the publication asked DHS for details. Mayor Tim Dougherty had initially said federal agents were reported on Lincoln Street, Martin Luther King Avenue and Speedwell Avenue and that he knew of at least two arrests. DHS described the operation only as occurring “near Morristown.”
Of the five people identified by DHS, one, Tomas Mejia Suar, had an illegal-reentry conviction and a prior simple-assault arrest, according to the agency. A second, Douglas Ernesto Lopez-Mendoza, had been arrested by Mount Olive police on a shoplifting charge in January. An arrest is not a conviction, and DHS did not say how that case was resolved.
For the other three named men, DHS provided immigration histories but no criminal histories. The agency said Juan Tinuar-Cipriano, Reginaldo Romero-Jimenez and Marcelino Huinil Perez had previously been removed or ordered removed from the country and later reentered.
DHS did not identify the remaining seven people. It also did not provide their ages, the specific places where any of the 12 were arrested, where they were being held or when they were due in court. Patch separately reported the agency’s account but likewise could not fill those gaps.
The department said all 12 remained detained and were either in removal proceedings or in the process of removal. Immigration detention and removal proceedings are generally civil matters. The federal crime of illegal reentry is separate and must be proved in court.
The operation was at least the third immigration sweep involving Morristown this year, according to local reporting. Eleven people were detained in January, including a Morristown High School student who was later released after a federal judge ruled his arrest unlawful. Two more arrests were reported in July.
DHS described the latest detainees collectively as criminals, but the information it released does not document a criminal conviction for most of the five people it named and says nothing about the other seven. That distinction matters. Immigration violations, criminal charges and criminal convictions are different legal categories.
The limited disclosure also prevents the public from determining whether the operation was targeted at specific people, swept in others encountered nearby or included anyone with pending applications or court cases. Those questions remain unanswered.
I appreciate the distinction between arrests and convictions. Thank you for noting that one person in a group having a criminal conviction does not mean the larger group can be accurately called criminals.