A desk sat empty at Dunmore Elementary Center on Thursday.
The day after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained a single father on his way to work, and later, his daughter, community members felt their absence.
“It's unconscionable to me that this is happening in 2025 in Dunmore, Pennsylvania. It’s awful,” said borough resident Breeda Cronin Holmes. “These are real people. They're human beings.”
Following emailed requests for comment on Wednesday and Thursday an ICE spokesperson said a statement was pending, but it had not been received as of Thursday night.
The names of the father and daughter have not been officially released. Dunmore Mayor Max Conway said masked ICE agents snatched the father, who was from Honduras, on Wednesday morning while he rode his bicycle on the 1700 block of North Webster Avenue, on his way to work.
Federal agents later took the man's daughter, a sixth-grade student in the Dunmore School District, into custody. The father allegedly missed an immigration hearing but does not have a criminal history, according to Conway.
'She's a Buck'
Holmes remembered meeting the father several years ago, after their daughters became friends. Holmes’ daughter encouraged her new friend to join the cheerleading squad. The friends loved cheering for the Bucks and making jewelry together.
“She's a Buck, and that's what kills me. There's so many things about this that kill me,” Holmes said. “She was part of this community. She was in our parades. She has a Dunmore cheer uniform. This is a girl that had a future here … This is a little girl that's just like any other little girl.”
Holmes would often give the daughter rides home from cheer practice, and the parents would use their phones to help translate their conversations. He’d ride his bicycle next to his daughter throughout the borough.
“He's just a lovely, genuine man,” Holmes said.
A friend alerted Holmes that ICE was in Dunmore on Wednesday.
“The second that I heard that they knocked the man off of his bike and tackled him to the ground, I immediately started crying, because I knew that it was (him),” she said.
A Facebook post including a photo of the bicycle, that Holmes said ICE left on the side of the street, had been shared more than 600 times as of Thursday night.
“They were just like us. Just trying to make it through another heavy day in this heavy world,” Holmes wrote in the post. “I’ve cried all day thinking about what’s ahead for her."
Holmes said many friends and community members fear speaking publicly about what happened to the family.
Sen. Marty Flynn responds
State Sen. Marty Flynn, a Democrat who lives in Dunmore, issued a statement Thursday night. While he said he understands he has no jurisdiction over federal immigration enforcement, it should reflect common sense.
The situation involved a parent with no criminal record who missed an immigration hearing, not someone who posed a danger to public safety, he said.
“Remaining silent would ignore what I view as a failure of fairness and compassion,” Flynn said in the statement. “When federal actions remove working families who pose no threat to public safety, it does not make our communities stronger or safer. It only creates fear and uncertainty among people who contribute to our neighborhoods and schools every day … We are better than this, and our policies should reflect that.”
